


Who ya gonna call? Not these creeps.

by TheIcyQueen



Series: The CREEPiverse - A "ghost hunting" AU [1]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood, Blood and Injury, Comedy, Developing Friendships, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Ghosts, Horror, Paranormal Investigators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2020-11-23 15:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 98,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20894153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: After transferring schools and finding herself utterly without a friend-group to call her own, Sam Giddings comes to the conclusion that she should probably make an attempt at socializing more. She finds a listing for an...interesting extracurricular club and decides to give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen?After all, there’s no way they’re serious about the whole ‘paranormal research’ thing, right? Right?!





	1. Prologue - Something strange

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, happy SPOOKY MONTH! In honor of the most wonderful time of the year, I’m gonna be posting this little GHOST HUNTING AU(!!!) I’ve been working on alongside my bigger UD fic! Will this be done by Halloween? Most certainly not - have you MET me? Time management isn’t my strong suit. 
> 
> Also, I have no idea how to say this, but this ENTIRE fic is based on a really, really good question featured in MBMBaM episode 471 (Face 2 Face: The Fraternity of Bones), so buckle in.

Really, the whole thing was her fault.

If she’d just stuck to doing her homework, she never, _ever_ would’ve found herself in this situation—and she _knew_ that, okay? She _knew_ that. But the essay she’d been working on wasn’t due for another two weeks, she was already ahead of schedule with it anyway, and Christ Almighty, it was _boring_, so yeah! Yeah, okay? She’d gone putzing around the internet instead. Who could blame her for _that?!_

And—_and!_—if there was blame to be had, then honestly, _some _of it belonged to her dad, too. _He_ was the one, after all, who kept calling and telling her the same thing over and over again: _You should get out there, Sam! You should be making friends and having fun! You can’t just mope forever, it’s not healthy…_

Not that she was moping.

It _had_ been a while since she’d transferred schools, though, and while she’d gotten adjusted to new classes, new professors, new dining halls, a new campus…even she had to admit there was a marked absence of new friends.

She had her reasons for that, of course…and she thought those reasons were actually pretty dang _strong_, but the fact remained that Samantha Giddings wasn’t the sort of person who thrived in isolation. She was a social creature at her core, and while the accident back home was still horribly fresh in her mind—a raw, throbbing nerve behind her eyes—maybe the time _had_ come for her to pull herself up by the bootstraps and try again. Give it another go.

If nothing else, she was getting _real_ tired of bumming around her dorm with no one else to talk to.

And that seemed like a solid line of thought, right? Sounded like a halfway decent idea?

Well it wasn’t! It wasn’t at all! Because it was _precisely_ that hokey bullshit that had led her to…well…

_This_.

See, she’d closed her essay document. And then she’d opened her browser. She’d gone to the school’s homepage, then clicked around through its (absolutely atrocious) user interface until she’d found the extracurricular listings. She’d started in the athletics tag, obviously, but she was a hiker, a free climber—_not_ a pilates person, or a weight lifter, or whatever the hell CrossFit people called themselves. She’d gone to the arts after that, but had only made it through two or three listings before she remembered that it took a _very particular_ sort of person to deal with self-proclaimed ‘_artistes_’ for any period of time. So she’d taken a risk, a real gamble, and clicked on the tag labeled ‘Other.’

That was when she saw it.

**‘Serious: Paranormal Enthusiast Needed!’**

Of course she clicked on it.

Who in the right mind _wouldn’t have?!_

The listing had been unexpectedly well written, and still it only took a sentence for her to realize what it was _actually_ asking for: a ghost hunter.

Ah. The joys of college.

The best part—the absolute _best_—was that the listing included a literal job application.

Again, _of course _she opened that link. Of course she did. This was _too_ good, how was she supposed to pass it up?

With nothing better to do, she read through the application, snickering to herself. It was bad. So, so, _so_ very bad…but so _good_, too. Good in the way truly horrendous movies were good; good in the way greasy, day-old takeout was good.

Each blank space was like the world’s weirdest Buzzfeed quiz, and she was weak to resist its pointless, time-wasting appeal. She lazily typed in response after response, scrunching her face up whenever an especially strange question necessitated an equally strange response.

> **Name?**

Well that one was easy.

> _Sam Giddings_.
> 
> **Do you believe in ghosts?**
> 
> _Only Casper and Boo Berry. _
> 
> **Have you ever had a real-life experience you would consider paranormal in nature? If so, explain.  
**

That was one of the face-scrunchers. 

> _Once, I was sure I was out of gum, but then when I checked my bag again, there was actually still a piece left. Other than that? Probably not._
> 
> **Why are you interested in this position?**

Sam looked at the question for all of five seconds before shrugging, typing out a flippant reply.

> _Because why not, right?_

And then, after more than a page of bananas-crazy questions like those, the final one almost caught her by surprise.

> **Do you have any tech experience?**
> 
> _Taught my dad to use an iPhone. He still doesn’t understand what an emoji is, but besides that, he seems to be doing okay._

She reread the ridiculous résumé, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “God. Takes all kinds…” She moved her cursor to the browser’s ‘Back’ button and clicked, thinking she’d give the athletics tag one last chance before giving up for the night.

Only…nothing happened.

Groaning, she clicked again…and again…but the page did nothing. She clicked on one of her bookmarks. Nothing. Clicked on the X to close the page. Nothing. Clicked to open a new tab, clicked to open her history, clicked to adjust her volume…nothing, nothing, nothing. She couldn’t open the task manager, couldn’t force quit her browser, couldn’t do _anything_, but her cursor just kept moving. Even as she waited, thinking maybe she was just dealing with some kind of lag, nothing changed.

The last straw came when she shut her laptop. Shut it, let it rest for _ten minutes_, then opened it again…to find no change.

“Cool. Great. This is _exactly_ what I need right before midterms…” Sitting down to the desk, she gave it another go, clicking and clicking and—

The screen flashed. 

> **Thank you for submitting your application! Someone will be in contact with you shortly!  
**

Sam stared at the words, feeling her eyebrows creeping up her forehead.

Well. Shit.

That hadn’t been the plan. She’d _meant_ to close out of the stupid thing, not send it in. Ugh.

She jiggled her finger against the laptop’s track pad and, lo and behold, when she clicked to a new page, it opened. No problemo. Like nothing had ever happened.

Sure. Fantastic. Why the hell not.

“…maybe someone’ll get a good chuckle out of all this, at least.” Too tired to think on it anymore, she shut the laptop again, going to take a shower.

So yeah, okay, in that way, it could be said the whole thing really _was_ her fault. She _had_ filled the questionnaire out instead of just laughing at it. A little social humiliation was the _least_ she deserved for doing something like that, and honestly? After everything she’d been through the past year or so? A little social humiliation was the _least_ of her concerns.

Or so she thought until she went to check her email, towel still wrapped around her wet hair, and saw the **(1)** next to her inbox. She didn’t recognize the sender’s name but opened it anyway, half-expecting to find a message from a classmate needing the day’s notes.

It was not from a classmate.

> _Hey Sam—_
> 
> _We’ve received your application, and if you’re still interested in joining the group, we’re going to be holding informal interviews tomorrow! Just come on over to The Willows complex off of 3rd and Main tomorrow at 7:30pm (apartment B10). Interviews typically take 15-20 minutes! Hope to see you there!_
> 
> _-A. Brown  
Collegiate Researchers Examining Extranormal Phenomena Society  
Representative_

Something about the message itched at the very back of her brain. As she read and reread the frankly unnervingly cheerful email (knowing full well that she would never, ever_, ever _sink so low as to show up to a ghost hunting meeting in a _stranger’s apartment_), it finally hit her.

C.R.E.E.P.

Whoever the fuck they were, they called themselves the fucking CREEP Society.

Yeah, no thanks.

Hard pass.

She signed out of her email and got ready for bed, though only _after_ making a mental note to thank her dad for putting the idea in her head.

Man oh man…there were some freaky people in the world.


	2. In the neighborhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam meets the whole gang, and man oh man...they're a bunch of creeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, you guys didn't think I'd be able to JUST leave you with that itty, bitty prologue today, did you? ;)

It was a complete and total accident that brought her to the apartment complex. _An accident_.

She had not—repeat: had _not_—actually _intended_ to go there. Maybe she’d made some questionable (even downright _bad_) decisions in her life, but if there was one thing Sam Giddings was _not_, it was an _idiot_, and there was _nothing _more idiotic than just showing up to a stranger’s apartment when you were a young woman. That went double when the stranger in question was holding open auditions for _ghost hunters_. Only idiots tempted fate like that.

But there she was, standing in front of the complex’s sign, a monstrosity made of rain-swollen wood, its overly complicated cursive curlicues (perhaps meant to represent the drooping branches of a weeping willow tree) spelling out _The Willows_ in sun-faded paint. The building itself was surprisingly new and remarkably well lit, people moving in and out as they went about their daily lives. None of them seemed to be aware of the spooky auditions being held inside. Oh, how she envied them that.

She grimaced as she stared at the main entrance, mind running wild with the thought, ‘This is how blonde morons like you die in horror movies.’

It was a good point!

A _really_ good point!

This was stupid and nonsensical and unsafe and yeah, she was walking inside, okay, sure. 

She made up her mind as she stepped into the foyer: If it took her more than _three minutes_ to find apartment B10, then she was out. Gone. Dust in the wind, baby.

As it turned out, the complex was _also_ very clearly marked. Of course it was. A sign pointed her up a single flight of carpeted stairs, and voilà, she was surrounded by the B’s.

_Greeeat._

A few steps and bam, there was B10 in all of its glory—just a normal door with a normal nameplate and a normal knob and a normal peephole, looking all normal. Sam let her eyes drop down to her phone, some part of her hoping she’d missed her own self-imposed window, some _other_ part of her sort of hoping…but that was stupid. That other part of her was unquestionably _not_ firing on all cylinders.

The digital readout on her home screen ticked over to a new minute. The third minute. She could go. Honestly, she probably _should_ go. But the promise she’d made herself had been three minutes to _find_ the place, not three minutes to _knock_, so…shit. She was sure she’d regret this later.

Sam knocked.

At first, she couldn’t hear anything from the hall except for maybe the low sounds of other people living their lives; then, from the other side of the door, there were footsteps and an unintelligible string of words probably not meant for her. She took a jerky step backwards at the heavy _thunk_ of a deadbolt being undone.

“If you’re here for the—oh.” The door was whipped open to reveal the speaker, an exhausted-looking dude rocking a faux-hawk and one of the dorkiest pairs of glasses Sam had ever seen in her life.

_Well hello there to you too, Buddy Holly_, she thought to herself, tightening her smile as he continued to blink at her. _Down_ at her, really, considering he stood about a full head taller than her.

“Uh…hi,” he said slowly—_suspiciously, _as though _she_ was the weird one in this equation—glancing around the hall to either side of her. “Can I…help you?”

Sam took a moment to try and remind herself _why_, exactly, she was there. If she hadn’t had her doubts about the whole ordeal before, she sure did now. The universe was giving her the perfect excuse to bail! A foolproof out! All she’d have to do was sigh, say something like ‘Whoops, wrong room,’ and boom! She could turn right the fuck around and leave. The opportunity was _right there_…

So then _why_, when she opened her mouth, did she find herself saying, “Hey, is this the, uh…” And by then, she was in too deep. In _way_ too deep. Good going, Giddings. She tried not to groan at herself. “…_interview?_”

There was a beat where he continued to just _stare_ at her, forehead creased with near-comical confusion. She watched as understanding very literally dawned in his eyes, and then, as though a switch had been flipped, everything about him changed all at once. His posture went loose and gangly as he hung halfway out the door, expression falling back into tired exasperation. “Uh huh,” he said tonelessly, sighing loudly though his nose. “_You’re_ here for the interview, huh?”

“…yes?” She just _had_ to stay, didn’t she? After a tentative nod, she lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Yup…yup, I am.”

“No you’re not.”

“I—” That time it was _her_ turn to pause, frowning up at _him_. “Wait, what?”

“Nah, really, ha ha, this is all real funny and shit, but c’mon. Whaddya take me for? Who put you up to this? I th—wait, was it fucking _Conrad?_”

She narrowed her eyes. “…who’s _Conrad?_”

“An _asshole!_” the guy insisted, raising his voice to direct the comment past her and into the hallway beyond, seemingly expecting someone to be hiding in the stairwell. “So yeah, this is cute and all, but—”

“Look, I…” Resisting the urge to rub at her temples, Sam took a deep breath. What was it her dad always said? ‘_In for a penny, in for a pound,’_ and all that jazz. “I don’t know a Conrad. I’m sure he’s an asshole, don’t get me wrong, but…”

“He _is_.”

“Uh huh.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket as she said it, scrolling through her emails until she found last night’s message. Turning the screen to him, she raised her eyebrows in an admittedly juvenile ‘Told ya so’ sort of expression. “I sent in an application and got _this_, so like, if I’m in the wrong place, just say so—”

“Oh holy fuck. Oh, _holy_ fuck.” He looked down at her phone, the screen reflected in the lenses of his glasses; Sam saw him begin yet another face-journey, and she braced herself for what she was sure was about to be another wave of fuckery. “_You’re_ Sam?!” he asked, eyes flicking to her face, his jaw dangerously close to hanging open. “_You?_”

Oh good. Exactly the sort of reaction one wanted from a stranger met on the internet. “I am,” she nodded, regretting this decision for the umpteenth time. She was too blonde for this. She was officially the kind of person who died in the first five minutes of a _Supernatural_ episode.

He blinked, appearing very much as though she’d just revealed one of the deepest secrets of the universe to him. She wasn’t entirely sure _how_ she expected the rest of the conversation to go, but when he spoke up again, she certainly wasn’t ready for what came out of his mouth. “But…okay, but hang on…you’re, uh…you’re a _girl_.”

Silence.

Dumbly, Sam looked down at herself, the corners of her mouth twisting into an impatient shape. “I mean…last time I checked…?”

“No, I—you don’t—I—we…” He blew out a raspberry and finally released his hold on the doorframe, raking a hand through his hair. “You’re _Sam?_ For real?”

“For real. It’s, uh, short for Samantha.”

“No kidding?” He seemed distracted even as he said it, not looking _at_ her so much as _through_ her.

The longer she stood there, the worse this whole thing felt. “Y’know what?” she said abruptly, jerking a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the stairs, “I should probably just go. I can tell this—”

“Hey, do you not hear me calling you?” came a new voice, a _feminine_ voice, from somewhere inside the apartment.

He offered Sam a helpless wince, holding up a finger as though asking her to hang on, turning to answer. “Ash, could you just chill for _two_ seconds? I’m kinda in the middle of—”

The voice seemed closer all of a sudden, its owner clearly approaching the door. “I—oh shoot! Do we have company? I c—_ugh_, is it _Conrad?_ I hope he has that $50 he owes Jo—” The door swung open wider, much to the nerdy guy’s chagrin, a second face popping out. “Oh geez, you’re not Conrad.”

Was Sam relieved to see another girl? Yes. Did it erase _all_ of her uncertainty? God no. Then again…these two _hardly_ seemed like the Ken and Barbie Killers.

The newcomer stood only just taller than Sam did, still considerably shorter than her aggrieved friend. Something about her seemed familiar, like maybe Sam had passed her on campus before, or maybe she’d spotted her in a giant lecture class. Either way, the girl (_Ash_, the guy had called her) was a _tiny_ thing, the color of her cheeks and nose giving her the rheumatic appearance of someone who was on the verge of a cold or crying or _both_, her auburn hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She looked Sam over with her _own_ reservations, her lips turning downwards into an unintentionally pouty frown. “Are…oh wow, are you here for the _interview?_”

“I, uh—”

That seemed to do it—the frown turned itself into a tentative smile and she stuck out a hand. “Sorry, it’s been a really, _really_ long day. Between you and me? It’s just been…a _lot_ of neckbeards, so you are like, _such_ a welcome sight right now! But w—oh! God, whoops, sorry, I’m Ashley Brown, the one who emailed you.”

Ah…A. Brown in the flesh. Though she still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about any of this, Sam took Ash’s hand and gave it a brief shake, her eyes moving slowly between her and glasses guy. “Neckbeards, huh?”

“Yeah, who woulda guessed weirdos would be drawn to—”

Ashley shushed him, nudging him over with her elbow until she was able to open the door all the way, ushering Sam in. “Ignore Chris. He’s kind of…”

“Charming? Hilarious? Handso—”

“Annoying.” Ashley rolled her eyes, shutting (but pointedly not locking) the door once Sam hesitantly wandered in. “Oh man, I’m sorry, I definitely didn’t ask _your_ name. Like I said, _long_ day…” She blew an exhausted breath upward, ruffling the tendrils of her hair framing her face. “Uh, it’s just past 7:30, so you’re probably…”

“Sam,” she answered with a nod. “I’m Sam Giddings.”

A low ‘tsk’ sound escaped her. “Thaaat explains it! We weren’t expecting any girls, so…_Sam_. Ugh. _Obviously_.”

“Those gender neutral names, man…” Chris commented, shrugging before heading into what appeared to be a kitchenette. “That’s how they get ya.”

“Do you want something to drink?” Ashley asked, raising her voice in a way that struck Sam as almost _parental_, like she was admonishing Chris for not offering. “We’ve got, like, every kind of soda under the sun, uh…Red Bull, Monster, some…_red_ Gatorade, if I’m remembering correctly, um…water, duh…”

“Barbecue sauce, mayo, pickles, a little ketchup…” Chris continued.

Another eye roll. “Please. _Please_ don’t let him reflect poorly on your opinion of us.” She lowered her voice as she walked over to a surprisingly expensive-looking couch, perching herself on one of its arms before waving for Sam to join her. “I’m sure this is like…” 

“Weird?” Sam sat on the edge of a cushion, well within view of the door…just in case. Neither of these two looked like the running sort, so if push came to shove, she doubted she’d have any issue darting out before they could do anything. More to the point, if it turned out either of them were able to so much as _power walk_ for more than thirty seconds at a time, she’d eat her own socks. “It’s a little strange, yeah. Look, before this goes too far—”

“Is that a no on the barbecue sauce?” Chris called from the kitchen.

Sam exchanged a brief look with Ashley, asking in that special non-verbal girl-language, ‘Is he for real?’

‘Unfortunately,’ came her similarly silent answer. “I’ll take a Monster! But only if we have any of the coffee ones left.” Ashley turned back to her, raising her eyebrows in an unspoken question.

“I’m good, thanks.”

There was a rattle as the fridge door swung open. “Suit yourself!”

Ashley dropped her hands onto her lap, clearing her throat in a laughably professional sort of way—she had the air of someone who wanted to be a grad student just a little _too_ much. “So…I promise we won’t keep you long, because I’m sure you have tons to do…”

Sam tried not to laugh at that. What she _wanted_ to say was that she doubted very heavily that _anyone_ who took the time to fill out a _ghost hunting application_ had an especially eventful social calendar…but this didn’t feel like the time or place. They’d only met, and yet she had an inkling that Ashley was probably the sort who would literally burst into tears if she said something like that.

Really, she was getting the vibe that Ashley was _always_ kind of prepared to burst into tears.

“We’ve been trying to find someone to round out our group for a little while, hence the whole—thanks!” She accepted a can from Chris, cracking it open as he pulled up a rolling chair from an impressive computer setup Sam only then noticed in the corner. “—Hence the whole interview thing,” Ashley continued, the spiel sounding rehearsed. “We’ve been doing the paranormal research schtick for…what? Six, seven months?” she asked Chris, taking the opportunity to steal a few gulps of her drink.

Swiveling from side-to-side in his chair, Chris narrowed his eyes, appearing to be counting in his head. “I dunno, somewhere around there? Want me to check?”

“Nah, not important. We’ve been doing it for a _while_, is the point, but like, we’ve been realizing it’s too much work for just _us_ to do effectively, so we’re trying to find someone else who might be interested.”

Sam nodded in the slow, polite way you do when note terribly interested, trying to run through the series of events that had brought her to this. Was _this_ what her dad had had in mind when telling her to go out and make new friends? She doubted it. “So it’s…the two of you, then?”

Ashley’s smile went tense for a second, but she quickly hid it by taking another drink. “Uh. No. No, there’s actually three of us. But _he_ stepped out to get something from the store, so…”

“So…” Well this _reeked_ of sketchiness. Sam stole another glance at the door.

“_Sooo_,” it was Chris who picked up the conversation then, lacing his hands behind his head in a makeshift pillow as he continued swiveling in his chair. “Ash is trying to grill you ASAP, because _she’s_ worried if he gets back, he’ll scare you off.” He beamed innocently when Ashley turned to glare at him. “Josh can be, uh, _intense_, when it comes to meeting new people.”

Hoo boy. “Intense, huh?”

“Not like…_gross_ intense,” Ashley said, clearly scrambling to regain some modicum of control. “Just…not always…cognizant of what is or isn’t socially acceptable to say.”

“That’s us!” Chris interrupted proudly, “We are _nothing_ if not socially adept, right Ash?” 

She groaned, turning to Sam once more. “This isn’t a _paid_ position or anything like that, but an _experiential_ one. It can be great for padding your actual résumé, if you know how to word it, and we can teach you how to use video equipment and editing software. _Your_ responsibilities would be super, _super_ minimal, unless you wanted to help with research, and—”

“Wait, wait…” Sam held up a hand. “I thought this was supposed to be an _interview? _This…kind of just sounds like you’re trying to sell me on joining you guys.” And then she paused, something clicking into place. “Actually…whoa. What do you guys even _do?_ You haven’t said _anything_ about that.”

Ashley opened her mouth to respond at the _precise_ moment the doorknob rattled. “Oh come _on_,” she sighed. Before the hinges could so much as creak, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling, calling out a loud warning to whoever was coming in. “Please watch yourself—we have _a guest_.”

The door paused in its arc. “Not sure I like the way you said that. Oddly menacing tone you’re using there, Ash. I—oh, if I walk in there and it’s fucking _Conrad_ without my $50…” The door opened fully, revealing some guy Sam could only assume was their number three. Short hair, sharp eyes, sharper jawline; his complexion was darker than Chris or Ash’s, but given that both of them were nearly translucent, that wasn’t saying too much. He set down a bulging plastic bag and toed off his shoes, all the while eying Sam over. He seemed doubtful, and possibly even more suspicious than she was feeling, herself. “Hello…” he said slowly.

“Hi. I’m not Conrad.”

“Tragic. Truly.”

“I also absolutely do not have $50 for you. Wish I did.”

“Mhm…” he hummed quietly, eyes flicking first to Chris, then to Ash.

Unsurprisingly, it was the latter who spoke up. “Sam, this is Josh,” her voice had lost its effervescently nervous quality. Now it seemed flatter—_tired_. “Josh, this is Sam. The one who—”

His eyes lit up then, a wide, toothy grin revealing a set of perfectly even, almost impossibly _white_ teeth. “Oh no way. _You’re_ Sam?”

“Gender neutral names…” Chris sighed.

“I gotta tell you…your application? _Priceless_. Loved it. Knew _instantly_ we had to get you in here. All the others we’ve been getting are so _serious_. Who needs that kinda energy, huh? Why not get _weird_ with it?” Josh dropped himself onto the couch sans decorum, making himself comfortable smack dab between her and Ashley. “Where’d we leave off in the speech?” He made a grab for Ashley’s Monster, snickering lowly when she pivoted her body to pull away from him.

“_We?_”

“We’re a _team!_ All for one, one for all, yadda yadda…”

Now that reinforcements had arrived, Chris seemed happy enough to remove himself from the meeting; with his foot, he pushed off from the couch, wheeling his chair back to the computers. “Sam just asked what it is we _do_,” he said as he put a pair of headphones on, angling the headband to leave one of his ears uncovered. “Good luck with _that_ minefield…”

“What we do, what we do, what we do…now _there’s _an interesting question.” Josh rubbed his hands together, “It’s pretty much what it says on the tin: We check out spooky shit. Creepy crap. Hellish hauntings. You name it, we’ll show up and wipe our grubby mitts all over it. _While _filming, of course, because you never really _know _when you might stumble upon some kinda proof of supernatural activity, do you? But if you were asking what we do _more specifically..._well, you’ve already met the Peanut Gallery, looks like, so let’s start with them. Ash is our resident librarian. Behind the scenes, she’s our researcher, fact-checker, social media presence, blahblahblah…”

Ashley rolled her eyes from over the rim of her can.

“But she’s _also_ our number one scream queen _and_ our precious little psychic medium. Really, _no one_ screams like Ash. It’s a talent!”

At that, Sam craned her head around Josh to get a look at Ashley, sizing her up in a new light. “_Psychic medium?_”

Instead of answering, she just shrugged her shoulders and finished her drink.

“Aaand then we got Cochise…our IT specialist.” Josh gestured towards Chris as he continued. 

“Wow, way to capture my very essence, bro.” He didn’t even bother turning around from whatever he was doing on the computer. Sam could hear the persistent _tip-a-tap_ of his fingers flying across the keyboard like a hacker straight out of a 90’s movie.

“Okay, okay, so _maybe_ he does a couple other things, but _mostly _he just carts the cameras around and makes sure they’re working right.”

“Fuck you.”

“Then there’s _me_.” His grin widened, removing all doubt from Sam’s mind—those were braces-teeth, all right. Josh might’ve been a different _flavor_ of nerd than the other two, but a nerd he _was_, and it was all too easy for her to imagine what that grin must’ve looked like when it was studded with brackets. Rubber bands too, she bet…they were just _too_ straight. “I’m what you might call the, uh…_face_ of the operation.”

Ashley did absolutely _nothing_ to muffle her groan of disgust. “And he’s modest, to boot!” She reached over, lightly thumping his shoulder, “‘The face’ means he’s the one who smooth-talks people into agreeing to let us film them, or let us poke around their moldy old basements.”

He leaned in confidentially towards Sam, “Yeah, I’m sure this’ll shock you, but Ron and Hermione over there aren’t the _best_ at talking to other human beings. I mean…” he waved vaguely, “_Clearly_.”

Sam had seen a ghost hunting show or two in her time; she wasn’t particularly _proud_ of that fact, but it was what it was. The formula was familiar enough for her to follow along with. Except, that was, for _one_ thing. “And let’s say I agree to do this,” she began, sticking a warning finger in his face when Josh’s grin began to hook itself into a smirk. “_Hypothetically_.”

“Oh, of course, of course!”

“What would _I_ be doing? Because correct me if I’m wrong, but it kiiinda sounds like you’e already got all the players you need.”

Josh and Ashley looked towards one another, and though Sam couldn’t see Josh’s expression from her position, Ash’s told her all she needed to know. She braced herself. And it was a good thing she did, because before she could really register what was happening, there was an unexpected weight on her shoulder. “So look, Sammy—can I call you Sammy?”

“Uh…”

“Sammy, I’m gonna level with ya. You are…no joking, _literally_ what our little enterprise needs.”

Her eyes slid to the hand on her shoulder, and Josh quickly pulled it away with an apologetic flourish. “Oh, _am_ I?” Sam raised her eyebrows as she looked up at him again, “Why’s that?”

A sliver of Josh’s tongue poked out to wet his lower lip. The motion seemed almost cartoonish in its deviousness, but she was already coming to suspect there was _usually_ a fair amount of cartoonishness with these three. “I’m not gonna mince words here, Sammy. We need a girl on the team.”

Her eyes narrowed. Deliberately enough to be noticed, she glanced over Josh’s shoulder again, made eye contact with Ashley, and then met his gaze again. “You _have_ a girl on the team.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “I meant we need a _pretty_ girl.”

“Hey!”

He turned away from Sam, holding his arms out to his sides. “You know what I _mean_, Ash! Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are _tons_ of people into the whole nerdy goth thing—Cochise, for example!”

“Um? Shut up?”

“For the last time, I’m not _goth!_”

“You’re close _enough!_ Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m working with trained chimps here…” When he turned back to her, Josh offered Sam a supplicating look. “She’s the spooky one. You _need_ a spooky, kinda out-there chick for certain shit, all right? Séances and vibe-checks and all that crunchy, crystal-based stuff. But! You can’t have the spooky one be one of the _faces_, okay? The _main_ girl, the one who talks to the clients and does opening narration and crap? She’s gotta be _wholesome_. All-American. Pretty and trustworthy and with a _basic_ understanding of how to put on eyeliner.”

That time, Ashley didn’t yell out—she just threw her empty can at Josh’s head, the aluminum can bouncing off of his temple with a hollow _thok!_ Sam watched with a confused sort of amusement as Chris leaned over from his desk to high-five her for the shot. She had to figure they had a fair bit of practice with that maneuver, because Ashley was able to return the high-five without looking, her eyes still locked on Josh in a positively withering glare.

“_Ow!_ It’s not _my_ fault you do your makeup like a Hot Topic cashier!” Though there was no way it had actually hurt, Josh made a point to rub at the side of his face, expression so perfectly pathetic that he may as well have been holding up a sign saying ‘Pity points, please!’

Oh, _he_ was gonna be a problem.

“Yeah, well, thanks I guess, but…I don’t think this is really my kind of _thing_—”

“You _did_ send in an app, though,” he pointed out quickly enough to make her wonder how long he’d been anticipating her answer.

She clucked her tongue quietly, trying to subtly angle herself towards the door. “Thought it was funny. I mean, c’mon, a job listing for _ghost hunting?_ Figured it’d be a joke—”

From behind Ashley, Chris fixed her with a doubtful look. “Uh…but you _showed up for the interview_. You really _that_ committed to your bit?” He seemed to consider that possibility for a second, “Good on you! Respect the craft!”

Well shit. He had a point. She grimaced and hoped it could pass as a smile. “I didn’t have anything else going on today. You know how it goes…” Sam hummed out a conspicuously fake laugh. “Just bored.”

There was a moment, beautiful but fleeting, where she thought that would be the end of it. She’d bow out gracefully, say ‘sorry’ with another smile, she’d scamper off to her dorm with a surreal story about some weird nerds she’d run into, and it would just be another batshit bizarre part of the college experience. But that glorious moment passed when Ashley raised her voice, no trace of her earlier uncertainty audible.

“Are you scared of ghosts?”

“What? I—ha, _no_, that would be…” Aw fuck, they were _all_ staring at her. This was not what she had intended. At _no_ point had she factored in any time to be shamed by a bunch of A/V club geeks. “…_so_ dumb. It would just be _so_…dumb.”

It was hard to tell, given the glare of his lenses, but she thought Chris’s eyes widened with realization. “Oh my God, you’re afraid of ghosts.” Something, some esoteric glance, passed between him and Josh before he stood, clearly trying (though _miserably_ failing) not to laugh. “Hey, just FYI? You aren’t exactly, uh…gonna have to worry about running into any. Not with _us_, anyway,” he added under his breath.

“How about this,” Josh tried again, “You come on one—_one_—investigation with us—” Over his shoulder, she watched Chris and Ashley roll their eyes in almost perfect unison, Ashley going so far as to cut scathing quotation marks into the air with her fingers. “—and if you decide it’s not your cup of tea, then hey! No harm, no foul, right?” She got the feeling he could sense her hesitance…but that he _also_ thought he was going to win this.

She didn’t answer him right away, instead trying to take stock of the situation. For all her doubts, she had to admit they _were_ right: If this had just been some stupid thing she’d done for a laugh, she certainly wouldn’t have trudged her ass all the way out to the apartment. She _definitely_ wouldn’t have _knocked_. And yeah, okay, maybe considering everything that had happened last year, ghosts weren’t her _favorite_ thing, but…but she’d shown up to the interview. She’d knocked. She’d walked in. And boy howdy, what a coinky-dink, it turned out she was exactly what they were looking for! The _only_ girl to show up, in fact!

So…

So maybe it was a sign.

Shaking her head, Sam folded her arms across her chest and sighed at her own idiocy. “If this turns out to be some kinda…sex cult, or scam to steal my kidneys, I’m gonna be _real_ mad.”

“Man, who steals kidneys anymore? Spleens are where it’s at thi—_ow!_”

Elbow still in Chris’s side, Ashley hissed a quiet, “_Shut up!_” before quickly adding, “You can live without a spleen, dummy! No one steals _those_.”

“This isn’t exactly filling me with confidence,” Sam said flatly, shooting Josh a suitably unimpressed stare.

“Eh, ignore Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. It’s so _hard_ to find good help these days…” he chuckled. Pulling out his phone, Josh tapped a few times to open up his contacts, pointedly ignoring Chris and Ashley’s organ argument as it raged on behind him. “How ‘bout you gimme those digits, and then we’ll get the details squared away, huh?” And then, serving as a horrifying afterthought, “Oh, and before I forget, you don’t have any allergies, do you? Latex, dust, mold, cats, any of that shit? Peanuts? What about peanuts? Lotta peanut allergies these days.”

For a long, _silent_ while, Sam simply stared at him. She blinked tiredly as her mouth pressed itself into a thin line. “You are…_really_ doing a bad job at selling me on this.”

“But I _am_ selling you on it.” That time, the smirk was accompanied by a wink. “Now, about those allergies…?” 

“None,” she deadpanned. “No allergies.”

Josh threw the others a brief two-finger salute over his shoulder. “All right! Perfecto. Y’know, Sammy? I can’t help but feel like this is gonna be the start of a bee-yoo-tiful partnership.”

“I’m still going to be paying _very_ close attention to the safety of my inside-bits.”

“Yeah, that’s fair…I really can’t fault you for that.”


	3. Who ya gonna call?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam realizes that a mistake has been made.

“So, a question occurs to me.”

“Mhm?”

“This is all, like…” Sam narrowed her eyes and winced, feeling some deeply seeded breed of terror sink into her lower gut as Chris heaved a bag of what seemed to be _obscenely expensive_ video equipment out of the trunk. It made a _very_ loud noise when he dropped it onto the pavement. _Oof_. The situation was not helping ease her concerns. “…_legal_, right? We’re not breaking any laws or anything?”

He brushed his hands off on his pants, chuckling as he glanced over to her. “That depends! We talking about the laws of _man?_ Or the laws of _God?_ Cuz I’m pretty sure the government doesn’t have any legislation protecting our ectoplasmic buddies. Well…not _yet_, at least. It’s probably working its way down the pipeline.”

Yeah, he _really_ wasn’t helping. “Hey Ashley?”

“Uh huh?” Her response came from somewhere near the front of the SUV.

“This is legal, what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much!”

Great. _Great_.

Chris straightened up, face contorted into a mask of indignation. “I just _said_ that!”

“I don’t…think you did. Maybe _you_ think that’s what you said, but it really, really was not.” Sam looked down at her phone for what felt like the millionth time since they’d arrived ten minutes ago, scrolling through a feed that simply refused to change. It was like the universe itself was sending her some sort of cruel message: You made your bed, now you get to _lie_ in it.

She had _expected_ to feel out of place. Anyone who _didn’t_ expect to be a one-man island when surrounded by the spooky version of The Three Stooges was obviously a moron. _However_. She hadn’t anticipated just how clearly she stood out as the new girl. Josh’s text had warned her to ‘wear something dark,’ but of _course_ he hadn’t gotten more specific than that…which was what had led to her being the asshole wearing a peacoat while everyone else was in a hoodie.

It was seasonal. It was flattering. It was not, apparently, what you wore when hunting Slimer.

She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet to try and take her mind off the unbearable awkwardness and the chill in the air. As she looked around, attention shifting from Chris unloading the equipment to the quietly confidential huddle Josh and Ash had formed up near the passenger’s seat, she played a little game with herself. It was an old favorite, really, one she’d played hundreds, if not _thousands_ of times before.

Guess!

That!

Major!!!

Pretty standard fare when people-watching on campus…only now, she had a bit of an edge. She had, after all, actually _spoken_ to their bizarre cabal already.

Chris was the easiest. Obviously. Never before had she met a human being whose very essence seemed to scream ‘Comp Sci!’ with half the passion or panache. Was it the glasses? The graphic print t-shirts? The overwhelming aura of complete and utter social discomfort? The caffeine? Yes. The answer was yes. All of the above.

Ashley presented more of a challenge, but not by much. Just looking at her only gave you _part_ of the story…talking to her was what sealed the deal. There was only _one_ department where you found people like her—equal parts excitable and irritable, politely formal but quick to overshare, clearly pretending her exhaustion was actually deep contemplation. English. Absolutely English. Probably the sort with an unnecessarily specific focus, too, like…like 18th century female poets that only wrote about tuberculosis and flowers. That felt about right. It felt _close_, at the very least.

Then there was Josh. Ooh, Josh. He was the one throwing her for a loop. As it stood, she was feeling film; something about him definitely had that filmmaker vibe (though that admittedly could’ve been because they were about to set out on a _filming project…_). They hadn’t even met the so-called ‘clients’ yet, and she’d already seen him flitting about, scoping exterior shots and flipping through checklists. She couldn’t hear what he and Ashley were talking about, but there was a _hunger_ in his expression that wouldn’t have been out of place on a director’s face. Mmm…but she wasn’t sure. He didn’t _feel_ like an arts kid. He felt like something _else_…though what that was, she couldn’t place. So he had to be film. _Had_ to be.

“You doing okay over there?”

Sam shook herself out of her thoughts to see Chris giving her a concerned look from the corner of his eye. “Oh. Yeah. Just zoning out.”

“Ah, good on ya. Word to the wise, though? Save the thousand-yard stare for _in there_. People eat that shit _up_ once the night vision flips on…” For emphasis, he hoisted a considerable camera up onto his shoulder, giving her a little “Hmm? _Hmm?_” while showing it off. She assumed he was running his last-minute checks as he futzed with the lens, gaze turning downwards and inwards towards the display. “So how you feel about tonight, newbie? Sufficiently creepy and or crawly?”

“I don’t know about _that_. Mostly I’m just sort of, uh…let’s say _apprehensive_.”

“Understandable. We _are _about to embark on a journey that will send us headfirst into the darkness that plagues the very heart of mankind.” He raised his eyes from the display, offering her a cheesy grin. “Whaddya think? Decent? Think I should try and renegotiate my contract so I get a writing credit?”

Despite her nerves, Sam couldn’t help but smile back, snorting a quiet laugh. “Oh, definitely.”

“Sweet. Maybe then I’ll get some respect around here. Show ‘em all I’m not just a pretty face.”

“So pretty that they keep you behind the camera, huh?” She winced as soon as she said it. _Fuck_. That wasn’t something you said to someone you’d only met _once_, it wasn’t—

“Man, you catch on quick!” Oh. Uh…wait what? Far from seeming insulted, Chris laughed right along with her, nudging one of the bags with his foot. “Between you and me? Josh can be a _biiit_ of a prima donna. Doesn’t like other people hogging the limelight. So he’s pretty much _gotta_ keep me off-camera, because the sheer _volume_ of thirst comments we’d get about this mug would flood his inbox and make him feel all inferior and shit.”

“Uh huh. Handsome _and_ modest. You must be real popular at parties.”

“Um, you forgot to put ‘_hilarious_’ on that list.” He wiggled his eyebrows jokingly before craning his head to look around her. “Hey, you guys think I should do the B-roll _now?_ Or wait ‘til after?”

Sam glanced over her shoulder to follow his line of sight; Josh and Ashley appeared from where they’d been lurking near the front of the car.

Josh quickly checked his phone, teeth bared in an uncertain grimace, “Uh…after? Yeah, after. We should really get in there so we can set everything up. Gotta make sure everything’s working right. Remember what happened back at—”

“I _apologized_ for that! And, not to be that guy, but I seem to remember it was _your turn_ to charge the—”

“Blah blah blah…” Flapping his hand dismissively, Josh nudged Ashley with his elbow. “You good, short stack? Ready for action?”

She waved him away, lips pursed tightly as she read through a considerable sheaf of papers, eyes flicking back and forth with the intensity of a scanner’s light. “I _will_ be, if you stop talking and let me focus…”

Her nerves were back in full force as she stared down at Ash’s papers. For all intents and purposes, she’d shown up to class, taken her seat, and realized a second too late that she’d never studied for the exam. “Um…should…should I have…notes?”

“Man, you _do not want_ any of that.” Chris snickered to himself before setting the camera down and going back to unloading their bags.

“Here’s the deal…” There was a sudden weight on her shoulders as Josh appeared between her and Ashley, draping an arm across the both of them. “Since this is your first day on the job and all, you don’t have to worry about doing _anything_. Not one single thing. Tonight, Sammy, you are our personal voyeur—”

Ashley didn’t even glance up from her notes as she cracked her gum and muttered a dull, “Gross.”

“—by which I mean we’ll be doing our thing, and all _you_ gotta concern yourself with is watching.”

“Yeah, that’s _literally_ the definition of a voyeur,” Ashley sighed. “I will _never_ understand how you passed high school English, I swear…”

Completely undeterred, Josh soldiered on, “I can take care of the talking. I always _do_, so…”

“Yeah, big surprise there!” Chris cut in, grabbing another bag from the trunk. “Hey, can someone take a couple of these? I’m _dyin’_ over here.”

The weight lifted from her shoulders as Josh straightened up, groaning dramatically all the while. “I gotta do _everything_ around here…Jesus. Anyway, the most important thing to remember tonight is to keep an open mind. Think you can do that, Sammy?” Before she could answer, he dropped her a wink and turned on his heel, joining Chris at the car.

She watched him walk away until he was (more or less) out of earshot. “So, uh…” she began slowly, shifting her attention to Ashley’s stack of papers. “Is he…always like that?”

“Mmm, like what?”

“Like…suave, but _bad_ at it?”

Ashley let out an undignified snort that quickly snowballed into open giggling. Jamming her notes into her bag, she met Sam’s eyes with a smirk. “Ooh yeah. And it does _not_ get better.”

“Great.”

“The good news, though,” she continued, gathering her hair up before securing it into a ponytail with a few practiced flicks of her wrist, “Is that as long as you don’t feed his already crazy-overblown ego…he doesn’t get _worse_, either.”

“Good to know,” Sam laughed. “Good to know…” She watched Chris and Josh do whatever it was they were doing, then casually leaned towards Ashley, lowering her voice so the guys wouldn’t hear. “So…what sorta stuff should I expect in there?”

“Oh, uh…” Distracted, Ashley glanced up from smoothing out her hoodie, shoulders bobbling in a shrug. “Probably just the basic crap.”

“Which would be…?”

Sam had to wonder if she’d said a magic word or something—Ashley dropped her arms to her sides, her face going slack with…what? Panic? Realization? Something you didn’t want your senior paranormal investigator staring at you with, that much was for sure. “Sam, you…you watched some of our videos before coming out tonight, right?”

“Nooo…?” she said slowly, beginning to deeply, _deeply_ regret _that_ particular decision. “Josh told me not to, so I—”

Ashley held her gaze for a beat, her brow knit, her irises bouncing to and fro as she scanned Sam’s face. Then, without warning, she whirled on her heel, marching up to Josh and shoving him—_hard. _“Are you kidding me?! Are you freaking _kidding _me right now?!”

“Augh! Hey, whoa, whoa, hold up there, tough stuff! What’s the big—”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish his question, sticking a finger up into his face like a furious parent might. “Why would you tell her not to watch anything?! What is your _problem?!_ She’s going to walk in there and have _no_ idea what to expect!”

“And that’s the point!” Josh had taken her by the shoulders, smiling that worrying smile of his all the while. “Let me ask _you_ a question, Ashley my darling dearest. Why do people _love_ found footage stuff like this? Hmm? Why?” Sam couldn’t see Ashley’s face from where she stood, but it was easy enough to imagine, given her stony silence and the way her fists were balling in her sleeves. “_Realism_. You want people to believe our shit? Then _we_ gotta believe our shit. How do we do _that?_ By injecting some raw. Human. Emotion.”

Ashley turned to look at Sam, her mouth puckered up into something that came across a little too angry to be a pout. She spun back to Josh. “This is why we don’t have friends. This is why we don’t get invited to parties. Because you _always_ have to take stuff a step too far, and—”

Josh snorted a loud, derisive scoff, folding his arms across his chest after adjusting the strap of his bag. “Ah. _That’s_ why. Thanks for clearing that up.” He peered over her shoulder towards Sam. “Hey Sammy, you cool with a few jump scares tonight? Maybe some twists and turns? Y’know…_paranormal_ shit?” His eyes slid back down, rather pointedly, to Ash.

Not for the first time that night, Sam found herself reevaluating her recent life choices. Why hadn’t she taken the bus? If she’d done _that_, at least she wouldn’t be relying on these three for a ride back to campus…

“I, uh…you guys are making it sound like you’re _expecting_ to run into…” _Ghosts_. “…something weird tonight.” She took a few steps to join them. “…_do_ you usually, um…_see_ stuff? Usually?” She felt absolutely _idiotic_ for even asking, but there was something to be said for Ash’s anger and the counterpoint of Josh’s glee.

“Who can say?”

“_Nice_, Josh…_real_ nice.” Ashley huffed out a frustrated breath.

“It’s gonna be fun!” He said, grabbing one of the bags off the ground before making his way towards the front door. Chris was hot on his heels, lugging most of the other stuff while muttering unhappily under his breath. Josh barely turned over his shoulder to add, “Oh, hey ladies? If we could move it along, maybe? Sometime tonight would just kinda be nice!”

Ashley rolled her eyes in a way that was quickly becoming characteristic for her, hitching the strap of her bag higher up her shoulder. “You heard him…show time.” She said it in a soft, if not sarcastic, singsong, scampering after the guys.

All by her lonesome, Sam cast one last uncertain glance over her shoulder to the relative safety of the car…and then followed as well, bringing up the rear of their ghoulish troupe.

By the time she made it to the door of the townhouse, Josh was already mid-spiel with who she could only assume were the people who lived there—a pair of young women, both somehow managing to look more distraught than the other.

“Aw man, you hate to hear that,” Josh had just finished saying, shaking his head in a way that made Sam think of used car salesmen (“They sold you that clunker for _how_ much? Aw man, you hate to hear _that_…”). He seemed to only notice her just then, or at least _pretended_ to only notice her, beckoning her up past Chris with a wave of his fingers. “Sammy! So nice of you to join us! This is Emily, and this is Jessica! They’re the ones we were telling you about earlier. The whole Ouija board business.” He smiled and shrugged, leaving her to _also_ smile and shrug, deciding that now probably wasn’t the _best_ time to point out that _no one_ had told her _anything_ about these two, much less gotten into the specifics of whatever the fuck ‘Ouija board business’ was supposed to mean.

“Hi,” Sam said, sliding her hands into her pockets in a bid to look casual. It blew up rather spectacularly in her face, surprise surprise, as both girls immediately paid even _more_ attention to her. She could almost see them doing the math in their heads, trying to figure out why three-fourths of the team was wearing sweatshirts and jeans…and why _her _dumbass was wearing leggings and a winter coat. “I’m new,” she added with a tired smile, and that seemed to be enough for them.

“All right now,” Josh said, obviously excited to get started (if the way he was rubbing his hands together was anything to go by), “You ladies said _most_ of the problems were in the…kitchen, right?” He glanced towards Ashley, who subtly nodded.

“It’s just been _really_ freaky,” one of them—Jessica—said before Josh could continue. “I mean, at first we just thought—”

“Uh, if you don’t mind,” he cut in, “We’d _love_ to hear the whole shebang ASAP, obviously, but if you don’t mind letting us set all this stuff down inside…”

What she had _expected_ was for the three of them to sort of stumble over one another, getting in each others’ way, touching things they shouldn’t, maybe occasionally pretending to walk into a cold spot so they could gasp ‘_What was that?!_’ But that wasn’t what she got. Oh nonono. The CREEPs moved like a well-oiled machine, setting up cameras and asking questions with a professionalism that almost left her breathless. Who _were_ these people? They _certainly_ weren’t the dorks who’d offered her barbecue sauce as a beverage back at the apartment.

She only sort of listened to Josh talk on and on and on, never actually looking into the camera Chris had pointed at him, but instead _only_ looking at Emily and Jessica as they explained their story. She only sort of listened to _that_, too, but as Emily led the guys downstairs to ‘get some readings off the fuse box,’ whatever _that_ could mean, she thought she’d picked up enough to understand.

Bad horror movie plot: Sorority sisters have a party, pull out a Ouija board, try to ask stupid questions, get freaked out, trash the thing, weird shit starts happening around the house. To _Sam_, the things they brought up as ghostly activity sounded a lot more like they didn’t know how to take care of the house (lights going out at the same time, shelves in the pantry falling and spilling food, strange noises at night…) but then again, she was standing in _their_ living room and calling herself a ghost hunter, so like…really, who was she to judge? The others had all kept their expressions grim as they listened, nodding occasionally, so hell, maybe she was the one who was wrong.

Oh, _brrr_…she didn’t like _that_ line of thought at all.

“So _remind_ me why they wanted to see the basement?” Nervously twiddling a braid between her fingers, Jessica looked towards the basement door. “All the creepy crap’s been happening _here_ on _this_ floor…”

Sam had the distinct feeling that Ashley had really only stayed upstairs because _she_ had stayed upstairs. Without any cameras rolling, without Josh running his mouth, she appeared more than just a little uncomfortable.

“Um, so…sometimes there’s electrical stuff that can…well, make you _feel_ like there’s something paranormal happening.” After double- and triple-checking the tripods Chris had set up earlier, Ashley fidgeted with the bag on her shoulder; Sam noticed how _heavy_ it seemed on her tiny frame. “And carbon monoxide leaks can do that too…just kinda make you feel scared, or like, uneasy. So they have to check that all that stuff’s okay first, before we move on to—”

“I don’t think our _fuse box_ is what’s been making our stuff _break_. The other day, _two_ mugs got broken, and it was like someone just_ threw_ them out of the cupboard!”

“Yeah, they just need to be sure. That’s all. It’s to, um, prove that it’s _not_ something obvious like electromagnetic fields or whatever.” Clearing her throat, Ashley shifted her weight onto her other foot, staring towards the basement with an intensity Sam hadn’t expected of her.

“…Oh. That makes sense,” Jessica said, though the lines around her frown told another story entirely.

Their relief was _palpable_ when the three came up the stairs, Chris strangely camera-less, Josh gesturing heavily as he continued talking with Emily.

“How’d…it go…?” As far as voyeurs went, Sam felt she probably wasn’t doing a _great_ job. But she was confused—what else could they have _possibly_ expected?

“Great! Great, nothing blipping on the radar, everything seems on the up and up…left the camera set up down there to see if we catch anything while Ash does her stuff, maybe try and get some EVPs…” Chris rattled it off as though she had any idea what those words _meant_ when put in a sentence together. “Oh, before I forget…” He waved a hand to get her to follow him, leading her to the little alcove in the kitchen where they could see the display monitors of the cameras mounted on the tripods. “_You_ are gonna be with _me_ for this one. So just, uh…don’t touch anything? Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.”

Sam stared. She took a breath, she let it out, and she dropped her hands to her sides. “Yeah. Sure. Why not.”

He patted her back before readjusting the cameras so that they were pointing at the kitchen table from two different angles, one straight-on and one from above. “Don’t worry, it’s all simple stuff. You watched a few of our videos, right?”

“No,” she sighed, trying not to look _too_ worried when Chris turned to stare at her. “Josh told me not to.”

“…oh good Christ. Just…ugh. God_damn_ it Josh…just don’t touch anything.”

“You already said that.”

“I _know_.”

Josh and Ashley had joined Emily and Jessica at the kitchen table, each of them sitting on a different side. When Chris made a motion in the air (Sam took it to mean the cameras were rolling), Josh launched back into his performer’s voice, speaking loud enough that the mics would pick him up, but acting as though he was _only_ talking to the girls. “Now, as you told us, all of this weirdness started when you were messing around with a Ouija board. If that’s the case, there are a _few_ different things this could be. But lucky for you, we have a professional with us.”

On that cue, Ashley bent down to the bag she’d been wearing on her shoulder, tossing the top flap back and pulling something weighty out. What she set on the table was an amazingly intricate, obviously handmade board, made out of some sort of almost opalescent wood.

Emily and Jessica exchanged wary looks. Sam couldn’t blame them—if she had been in their shoes, she never would’ve wanted to see one of those things again. Shit, she didn’t want to be seeing this one _now_, and she _hadn’t_ invoked the spirits of the wrathful dead with one recently. She looked towards Chris, but he just waved her off.

Ashley sat at the table, staring down at the spirit board with her mouth twisted into a shy, apprehensive shape. There was a moment where she sniffled quietly, nose twitching like she had a cold, and Sam realized all at once that she couldn’t tell how much of it was the genuine anxiety of being in front of a camera and how much of it was an _act. _Either way, she couldn’t deny it lent a tense air to the scene. Ashley attempted a weak smile, lifting her eyes from the board to the pair of girls. “Um, I don’t know about _professional_, but…we need to see who it is that’s causing this trouble for you, if anyone, and then figure out how to get them to stop. That could be really easy or, um…not…so. We, uh, we need to make a circle to start, okay?” She turned to Josh with that same deflated posture, hands kneading her sleeves on her lap. “Are you ready?”

“Always.” Josh took a second to roll the cuffs of his sweatshirt up to his forearms. “All right,” he said, somehow managing to make it seem like he was chatting with a couple of old friends instead of two complete strangers. “Now, I’m sure you’re both a little nervous about this, given everything that happened last time…but Ash here knows what she’s doing.” He paused long enough to set a hand on her shoulder and give her a good-natured nudge when she pretended to shyly look away. “We just have a few important rules to follow, _just_ to make sure everything’s safe as can be. I’ll let _her_ do that part since she’s the pro.”

Clearing her throat, Ashley kept her eyes low, trained on her hands to avoid the others staring at her. Every so often, she’d steal a quick look at the girls across from them, but never _once_ did she turn towards the camera. “Okay, um, so…the biggest thing you need to remember is that we might not get anyone at all. If we do, it’s…it’s like talking to a person you don’t know. So like, maybe they’re telling the truth, maybe they’re lying. So just keep that in mind. Once we start, you _can’t_ leave until we say ‘goodbye.’” She tapped a finger against the corresponding spot on the board, “Never, _ever_ leave until we say ‘goodbye.’ And last…” A tiny noise escaped her then, a breathy huff accompanied by a fearful glance at Josh. “Um…okay…I’m not saying this _will_ happen, but…” Her eyes remained on Josh, her lips pursing before turning into what could’ve been a pout.

He patted the top of her hand with a reassuring nod. “C’mon, it’s fine. You got this.”

Ashley drew in a deep breath, and Sam was shocked to hear how close to tears she suddenly sounded. “Since…since you said you had problems with the board before…it’s…it’s _possible_ we might run into something…” another nervous noise, “Risky. If that happens, I’m going to tell you to help me move the planchette to ‘goodbye,’ okay? But that’s the _only_ time you should move it, even a little! If I say so, do it, but if I don’t, then absolutely _don’t_ move it yourself.”

When she looked to the other side of the table, the roommates were pale with fear, nodding their heads jerkily; maybe _Sam_ wasn’t sure how she felt about the whole thing, but _they_ sure seemed pretty convinced. Something about their terror sent a cramp through her stomach. Man, she hoped she wasn’t going to regret going along with this.

Josh hunched himself over the table to lean closer to the girls. “We’ve done this a _hundred_ times. Like Ash said, chances are good we don’t get anything at all! Usually when this kinda thing happens, it turns out to be more of a power-of-suggestion thing…someone accidentally moves the pointer, or thinks they’re being funny and moves it on purpose, and then everyone gets super freaked out! Then every normal bump in the night seems like a monster! But don’t you worry…” If nothing else, Sam had to admit Josh’s grin could be _exceptionally_ convincing when he put his mind to it. “We’re gonna get to the bottom of this for you guys.” He exchanged a look with Ashley, who nodded somberly. “Are you feeling ready to go?” he asked them, tone still warm, still full of that Good-Samaritan concern.

“I, uh…” Jessica and Emily looked to one another apprehensively. “O-okay…”

Only barely turning to where they were manning the cameras, Josh flashed a thumbs-up that Chris immediately returned. “All right, Ash…” he said steadily, “Take it away, kiddo.”

She hadn’t wanted to, but Sam caught herself frowning as the four of them each placed a finger on the planchette. There was a sinking sort of doubt blooming in her gut like a horrible jungle flower, filling her with a cocktail of emotions she hadn’t felt since…well, since before she’d transferred, for sure. Since she’d found out about the accident. Eugh. She peeked over to Chris and saw him just sort of absently staring into the main camera’s display, expression bored, hands jammed in the pouch-pocket of his sweatshirt.

So much for any kind of commiseration.

At the table, Ashley had closed her eyes, forehead wrinkled with concentration. Her voice was so small that Sam was startled to see the mics were picking it up at all. “Is there anyone here who wants to speak to us?” She went perfectly silent between questions, breathing deeply through her nose. In the displays of the cameras, the others’ expressions of grim resignation were clear as day, Josh’s eyes on Ashley, the girls’ on the spirit board. “Is there anyone here who wants to speak to us?” she repeated.

Sam’s breath caught in her chest.

The planchette had begun to move—just a little, just _slightly_, but enough that the girls across from Josh and Ash reacted with loud gasps.

Voice still small and wavering, Ashley repeated her question yet again. “Is there anyone here who wants to speak to us?”

Her eyes widened as she watched the pointer creep towards the corner of the board on the camera’s display; she looked up quickly, seeing the same scene unfolding in real-time before her.

“That’s a yes,” Josh said, speaking so lowly that his mic only barely picked it up.

Ashley’s face contorted with concentration, the lines around her mouth and eyes seeming almost pained. “With whom are we speaking?”

Sam jumped when, next to her, Chris exhaled a terse laugh through his nose. If he noticed how badly he’d spooked her, he didn’t show it. He just muttered, “Fuckin’ ‘_whom_,’” under his breath and shook his head.  
  
She meant to speak up, to ask him if this was _normal_, but the girls had started calling out letters, and that jarred her from her thoughts. Sam watched as their four arms were jerked around the board, stopping for a moment at a time.

“…R-I-E-N-D…?”

“Friend,” Ashley exhaled, brow relaxing a smidge. “You’re a friend?”

“Glad to have you,” Josh commented breezily, looking across the table with a reassuring smile. It seemed to work, if only slightly, both of the girls tentatively smiling back.

“If you’re a friend, then why are you scaring the people living here?” Her mouth took on its usual pouty shape. “Can you tell us that?”

The planchette remained unmoving, hovering over the letter D. Around the table, the four simply sat and waited, but there was no movement for the better part of a minute.

Josh leaned closer to Ashley and asked, “Think maybe that was too complicated?”

Her frown trembled. “Oh, um…yeah…yeah, maybe,” she admitted in a soft whisper. “Are you the one causing trouble here, friend?” she tried instead, opening her eyes to look somewhere up towards the ceiling.

Much to Sam’s surprise, the other girls craned their heads upwards as well, almost as though expecting to see something floating near the light fixture.

There was a scratchy sound when the planchette began to move again, not making a beeline for the YES or NO as she might’ve predicted, but gliding from letter to letter.

“N-O-T-M-E.” After announcing the final letter, the corners of Josh’s mouth turned down. “Hmm.”

“What does _that_ mean?!” Emily asked, her tone harried.

He didn’t answer. No, Josh turned his head to Ashley, watching her with an even, unflinching sort of stare. “What do we think?” he asked, no longer whispering.

She shook her head slowly at first…then faster, inhaling a short breath. “There’s someone else here.”

“Someone _else?!_”

Sam looked to Chris, feeling like her eyes might fly out of her skull if she opened them any wider. He seemed _wholly_ unimpressed, though, headphones skewed, attention on the camera display, hands still jammed in the pouch of his hoodie. She jostled him with her elbow just as the group around the table let out a loud, collective shout, the planchette jerking in a rough semi-circle in the middle of the board.

Chris _finally_ turned to her, eyebrows high in what could’ve been a question, could’ve been frustration; the shadows from his glasses and headphones made it hard to tell.

“Is there someone else here with us?” Ashley asked, a new, strained quality bleeding into her words. “Who has been scaring the people in this house?”

He shook his head slightly and looked down to the display again, leaving Sam to stare helplessly. She crossed her arms tightly, watching the table with her lips pressed into a worried line. This wasn’t right. _None_ of this was right.

There was a beat where nothing happened. The girls’ heads moved, swiveling this way and that, but Josh and Ash remained as still as the air around them, both looking to the board with dour expressions. Another moment of nothing, then another, then…

“Oh, so you can’t talk to us, huh?” If Ash’s tone had seemed strained, then Josh’s had gone downright confrontational, sharp and warning, and just a little bit too loud. “You can skulk around here scaring these _good people_, sure, you can do _that_, but talking to us? _That’s_ where you draw the line?” He laughed, a curt _tsk_ of breath, and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t react, Sam noticed, when the girls both whipped around to turn their wide-eyed stares on him.

“Josh…” Ashley’s voice was a hushed warning.

“No. No, this is bullshit, Ash. We don’t have to sit here and act all chummy with this thing.” Josh adjusted himself in his seat, finger never leaving the pointer. “You know what you are?” he asked the air, the board, the thing looming out of sight, “You’re just a fucking bully.”

“Ugh. Gonna have to bleep that…” Chris grumbled.

“You’re a bully and a _coward_.”

That did it—the planchette began carving large, uneven circles through the board, taking their arms along for the ride. Ashley was the one calling out the letters as they came, hardly having enough time to read one before the next came. “G-E-T-O-U-T-G-E-T-O-U, oh man oh man oh man…”

There was a collective shout from the table when the planchette gave what must’ve been a _massive_ heave, shaking off all four of their hands. Sam felt something solid against the small of her back as she fell against the pantry, staring in blatant disbelief as the planchette _continued to move_ on its own, still jerking brutally between those letters. G-E-T-O-U-T-G-E-T-O-U-T-G-E-T-O-U-T.

Emily yelled something unintelligible and Ashley frantically tried to get a finger back onto the pointer; Jessica was staring without moving and Josh had turned his face back up to the ceiling to shout.

“Don’t leave the circle!” Ashley insisted over the chaos, forcibly pressing down on the planchette. It seemed to slow its movements, but it didn’t stop them, by _any_ means. “We need to _get rid of it!_” She seemed to actually be _straining_ against the force of the thing, which was horrifying in and of itself, but Sam’s throat tightened when she saw that the letters had changed since last she looked. Now, instead of G-E-T-O-U-T, it seemed to be spelling something else: B-L-E-E-D-B-L-E-E-D-B-L-E…

Josh got a finger on the planchette, adding his strength to Ashley’s. _Still_ it kept moving, struggling against them with a mind of its own. “You heard her!” Josh said across the table to Emily and Jessica, “_Come on!_”

They seemed hesitant to touch the horrible thing (what a shock), but tentatively reached over again, hovering their fingers over it.

“Whoever the _fuck_ you are,” Josh yelled into the ether, “You are _so_ uninvited from here. You can take your creepy bullshit and fuck _right_ off!”

“You’re not welcome here,” Ashley added, her warning significantly less energetic than Josh’s. “Goodbye, spirit.” With all four of them pressing down as they were, she was able to shove the planchette down and down and down past the row of numbers to the GOODBYE. The glass viewfinder slid over the word.

And then the lights went out.

The kitchen filled with shrill screams, one of them _Sam’s_. “It’s fine!” came Ashley’s voice. “It’s fine, just—”

They flickered back on a moment later and everyone screamed _again_. That time, though, it probably had less to do with the board, and more to do with the nosebleed Josh had sprung. He touched a finger to the wetness above his lip, glanced at it, then hurriedly wiped the rest of it away, trying to act as though it wasn’t anything big.

“Are you ok—”

“I’m cool, I’m cool. You wanna run them through the closing stuff, though?”

Ashley nodded, eyebrows drawn up and in and she let him get up from the table. “So…I know that was a _lot_, obviously, but the good news is—”

Being very careful to avoid stepping directly in front of the cameras, Josh headed back for the front door, pausing only long enough to catch a glimpse of Sam’s face before nabbing one of her sleeves between two of his fingers, gently guiding her out from behind the cameras to follow him.

She didn’t say anything until they got back outside, her brain chugging at a million miles an hour as she desperately tried to process what had just gone down. “I—are you—I do—” And then, horrified, she watched Josh lick the red smear off of his hand.

“Huh? Oh, I’m a-okay. Totally great, in fact.” There it was. There was the grin.

Sam did the same thing she’d done all night. She stared.

“Uh, are _you_ okay?” he asked, reaching for her with his (unlicked) hand. “You’re lookin’ a little peaked there, Sammy.”

They didn’t have to wait _too_ long for Chris and Ashley to rejoin them, both weighed down by the same massive bags they’d only just dragged into the townhouse. “Don’t say anything. Don’t say _anything_,” Ashley hissed, making a beeline for the SUV, literally dragging one of the equipment bags behind her. “I am just…_not_ in the mood.”

“Oh _you’re _not in the mood? _You, _huh?” Josh watched the two of them cross in front of them, waiting until they’d gotten abut half of the way before following. “_You’re _not in the mood…” he sighed, leaning himself against the side of the SUV once Chris popped the trunk. “Hey, you know…now that we’re all gathered here together, dearly beloved…” His voice dropped into a sharp whisper. “What the _fuck_ was that back there?!”

Throwing her hands up defensively, Ashley was quick to pass the buck. “Don’t look at _me!_ All I do is ask the questions. _I’m_ not the one giving the answers.”

Sam looked between the three of them, the very image of bafflement. Were they…were they _mad_ that they had made contact with—

“Hey, whoa, I was doing my best, okay?! Sam nudged me and scared the everloving shit outta me!”

“Ugh…see? See?! _This_ is why she should’ve _watched our stuff_ before tonight.” Ashley stuck an accusatory finger in Josh’s chest, dimpling the fabric of his hoodie. “How’s that ‘emotional realism’ treating you _now_? Still feel like a good idea?”

“Oh.” Abashed was not a look Josh wore well. He seemed to scramble for a moment, swiping Ash’s hand away from him before clearing his throat, his usual grin just _slightly_ less convincing than it had been before. “Learning curve!” He said as though it explained everything away. “Opening night jitters. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, I thought you guys covered really well…”

“Uh, ‘you guys?’ I think what you meant to say, Cochise, was ‘Man oh man, Josh, you crushed that shit. Improv is seriously your calling, bro.’”

That was it.

Sam was _done_.

The night had been surreal, to say the least, and now, as she stood staring at them bicker, she realized her patience with these idiots had absolutely run its course. “_What the fuck?!_” All of them turned to face her in unison, clearly unprepared for the look on her face. “What the _fuck_ was _any of that?!_”

Josh opened his mouth…then turned to Chris, who turned to Ash, who looked back at Josh. “Y’know, Sammy…I don’t say this often but uh…I’m thinking maybe I made a mistake here. Maybe I should’ve had you watch some of our stuff after all.”

“Gee,” Ashley muttered, angrily shoving one of the camera bags into the trunk. “Ya _think?!_”


	4. "Ghost" Busters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes a less-than-informed decision.

“…_all_ of it?” 

“All of it!”

“Now wait, hang on just one second…you can’t tell her _all_ of it’s fake. I put _hours_ into that editing! That shit’s as real as the nose on my face!”

“Yeah, do you know how _long_ it took me to make that fun little party trick of yours, Ash? Fuck you, ‘It’s all fake.’ Eat my entire ass.”

Ashley held Sam’s gaze, refusing to look at the guys even as they heckled her, instead just shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “Ignore them. Please. The moral of the story is that there are no ghosts. Obviously. Ever. It’s just, um…”

Josh lifted his hands, fingers pinched together like some caricature of a fastidious Italian chef. “_Innovative production_.”

That time Ashley didn’t need to roll her eyes—her face told Sam everything she needed to know. “Uh huh. Sure. We’ll go with that.”

After the night she’d had, Sam wasn’t feeling particularly up to shooting the shit with any of them; call her crazy, but sitting through a séance-gone-wrong hadn’t exactly been her idea of a fun Saturday night. So she let her attention drop down to the greasy plate of food in front of her, doing her best to ignore Chris and Josh’s riffing. To be _entirely_ fair, at least _Ashley_ had shown some shred of mortification once the shit had hit the fan…but that didn’t mean Sam was especially jazzed with _her_, either. “The lights?” she asked flatly.

Chris cleared his throat with a flourish, pausing only long enough to thank the server as they set down their milkshakes. “I won’t _bore_ you with _all_ the sordid details…” he began, drawling in what had to be the _worst_ attempt at a British accent she’d ever had the misfortune of hearing. “But I _will_ say there’s a _reason_ we always check the fuse box first…”

“Mhm,” Josh agreed slyly, foregoing his straw to just fucking drink his milkshake out of the glass like some sort of heathen.

“…and it only has uh, a _little_ to do with checking for faulty wiring.” His chuckle was theatrically ridiculous, “Leave a camera down there to ‘document activity’ or leave a recorder to see if it ‘picks up voice phenomena’ while we’re upstairs…” Sam was disappointed in herself—it was _very_ hard _not_ to laugh when Chris and Josh so perfectly synchronized their air-quotes. “And boom! A perfectly valid excuse to go _back_ downstairs and _maybe, perhaps, occasionally_…remove anything that may or may not have been…_interfering _with their electricity.” He shrugged nonchalantly, “I mean, _totally_ hypothetically, of course. I would never admit to doing anything as uncool as, y’know…” Another playful shrug. “Hotwiring a _house_…But what I _am_ saying is that if I _wanted_ to do something like that, it would be a _really easy _thing to do as long as _someone_ was chatting them up and keeping them distracted.”

Josh snickered under his breath.

When she met her eyes again, Ashley offered Sam a tiny, sheepish smile.

She took her own milkshake from the center of the table, looking down into it but making no immediate move to drink it. Something about the froth on top was just…getting to her. “The sudden nosebleed?”

Next to her, Josh’s chest rumbled with the dastardly guffaw of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. “What, you mean this shit?” He moved quickly in much the same way he had before, reaching up to his face, fingers gingerly touching at the base of his nostrils. His upper lip and fingers were streaked with blood when he pulled them back. He stared at the blood on his hand with wide eyes, breath growing frenzied…and then dropped the act entirely, the menace in his laughter giving way to frat-boy glee. “_Oooh no, someone help, I think I’m hemorrhaging…_” he wailed quietly…right before licking his fingers clean in as graphic a way as possible.

“_Josh!_” Ashley reached across the table and grabbed his wrist (not unlike an angry parent might), tugging his hand away from his mouth and _frantically_ indicating a nearby table with her eyes.

He turned and waved cheerily to the lovely family of five that had been—and still were—staring at him with horrified disgust.

Sinking back down into her seat, Ashley let go of Josh and pulled her hood up over her head, visibly on the verge of cringing into herself. “Oh my _God_…we can’t go _anywhere_…” she moaned.

Absolutely none of Josh’s amusement had waned. He turned back to Sam with that same smirk, brandishing his still-sticky fingers. “Corn syrup and food coloring.” With his other hand, he quickly twitched at the cuff of his sleeve, revealing what looked like some kind of thin nozzle down near his wrist.

Maddeningly, Sam’s first thought was: _Like Spiderman, but with blood_. She had to bite down on the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

Oh, she was _not_ giving them her laughter.

She pushed her milkshake away and went back to her plate of food, poking disinterestedly at her mushy fries. “And the whole Ouija board thing?”

“Spirit board.”

At the sharpness of the correction, she looked up, taken aback.

“Um, sorry, it’s…stupid, but…” Ashley wrapped the strings of her hoodie around her fingers, unwrapped them, wrapped them again. “_Ouija_ is Parker Brothers trademark. I mean, okay, _Hasbro_, now, but it _used to be_ Parker Brothers, and—” She noticed the looks the others were giving her, and let her hands drop into her lap. “Doesn’t matter. Saying I use a _Ouija_ board just isn’t right, because I didn’t buy it at Target, y’know? It’s a _spirit board_ or a _talking board_, and it’s handmade—”

“By the darkest, most malevolent demonic presence on this planet,” Chris added.

Josh turned to Sam, his grin going absolutely cheesy. “Hi, howya doin’?”

“—_and_,” Ashley continued to speak over them, “That one’s…harder to explain. But it’s still fake.” 

“It’s _not fake!_” 

“It’s not _real_.”

“It’s real _enough_, Ash.”

She rolled her eyes back to Sam, still looking very, _very_ abashed by the whole ordeal. “Just…one of these jerks called it a ‘party trick’ earlier. That’s a good description. It’s a party trick! Totally…well, _usually_ totally scripted. Tonight was…full of surprises.” The look she shot Josh could’ve melted ice.

Sam let it all sink in for a minute or two. She listened to the three of them eat their awful food as she stared at her own, replaying the night’s events. It seemed so…so…_obvious_ now that they were putting it out in the open, but man oh man, the adrenaline, the confusion, the _fear_ was still so fresh in her mind. This was what she got for showing up to strangers’ apartments. This was what she got for clicking on strange personal ads on the school site. What else had she expected? “So this is what you guys do? You just…go around lying to people? Scamming them into thinking you’re helping them?”

She’d expected (_hoped_, maybe) to see some kind of shame cross their faces at the accusation…aaand she was sorely disappointed.

“Yup,” Chris said, frowning down at his milkshake, trying to fish the cherry out with his straw.

“Pretty much,” Ashley agreed, leaning over Chris’s shoulder to _watch_ him try to get it.

“That’s sort of a gross over-simplification of the process, Sammy, but I mean, tomayto-tomahto.” Josh reached over to rudely stab his fork into Chris’s shake, pulling the cherry out and offering it to Ashley; much like the scene at the townhouse, the whole thing felt very well practiced, as though they’d done it a million times before tonight. He stuck the fork into his mouth thoughtfully, the metal tines coming out clean when he pulled it back out. “Lemme ask you a question, Miss Giddings…did we take _any_ money from those sweet, precious angels we met earlier?”

She watched him, not quite _warily_, but _carefully_. His voice had taken on the familiar tone of a debate team kid, or maybe a business major giving a presentation. Whatever this was, whatever he was settling in to lay out before her, she had no doubt he had thought it through at length. “No,” Sam admitted slowly, absently mopping a gob of ketchup off her plate with a fry, “You didn’t.”

“Exactly! _And_…not to put too fine a point on it, but who’s to say we _didn’t_ help them, huh?” Josh spread his arms out as best he could in the cramped booth, assuming a wide-eyed, innocent expression. “Are you familiar with the placebo effect?” So much for the innocence—the debate team voice was back with a vengeance. “You can give someone a _breath mint_, tell them it’ll cure their headaches, and bam! Say it convincingly enough? Maybe wear a white jacket or hold a clipboard? Chances are good they’re gonna have a sudden _miraculous_ reduction in headaches. You don’t need to give people _real_ shit to heal what ails ‘em…nah, you just gotta give ‘em what they _think_ they need. So what if we pulled some razzle-dazzle back there? If you want, you are _free _to come back with us in a few days, wherein we’ll show them our ‘_footage,_’ Ash’ll tell them to put some rocks near the front door and maybe burn some incense, and you will see with your own eyes how _relieved_ they’ll be by the time we leave.”

“Oh my God.” The realization hit her like a semi-truck, freezing her hand halfway to her mouth, leaving the fry to hang limply under the weight of the ketchup. All this time she had him pegged as a film major. He wasn’t. He _wasn’t!_ “You’re a fucking _psych major_, aren’t you?!”

Across the table, Ashley snorted.

“Well you don’t have to say it like _that_…” Josh bristled, his smirk momentarily fading.

Seesawing his hand in the air, Chris joined in on Ashley’s laughter. “Eh…I dunno man, you kinda _do_ have to say it like that.”

Sam was still shaking her head, food growing cold and forgotten as she stared at Josh. It was stupid, how much it felt like entrapment. There she’d been, figuring this was just another film student trying to pull his friends into his _magnum opus_, when in reality, he was a goddamn _psych major_ pulling _psych shit_. “Is this supposed to be some gross Stanford Prison Experiment thing? That’s _so_—” 

“Nonononono…” That time it was Ashley who spoke up, waving both of her hands defensively in front of her own face. “Trust me, you’re like…” she shot Josh another strangely parental glare, “…not _wrong_ to suspect that, but no. Sometimes I _wish_ it were an experiment. At least _then_ we’d be contributing to _science_…”

“We’re contributing!” Josh insisted. “We’re _contributing!_”

She leaned in towards Sam, eyebrows high and mouth pursed to the side. It was the universal look of feminine exhaustion: ‘Wait ‘til you hear _this_ shit,’ that look said. “It’s _literally_ just an internet thing. That’s it.”

“Ash, fuck off, you don’t kn—” 

Obviously used to being interrupted, she held her palm up to block out Josh’s face, continuing her explanation without missing a beat. “It’s their most recent attempt to go viral. _Nothing_ deeper than that.”

“Oh come on! We—”

“_Nothing_.” If possible, her eyebrows crept even higher. “Before _this_,” she said with a mean little lilt in her voice, “They tried to have a comedy channel. Didn’t work.”

“The world isn’t ready for my particular brand of genius,” Chris sighed.

“Before _that_—”

“Hey, know what? If you wanna talk about failed internet ventures, Miss Brown, I think we can talk about _failed internet vent—_”

Whatever Josh had meant by it, Ashley seemed to catch on quick enough. She dropped the topic entirely, shaking her head as she continued. “The _point_ is that no, this isn’t a gross statement on the gullibility of mankind. It’s a sad, _sad_ attempt to get views on YouTube.”

When her eyes slid to the guys again, they both had the decency to look at least _somewhat_ sheepish. Without saying anything, she inspected their faces, searching for any sign of deception in Chris’s awkward grimace and Josh’s floundering grin. “Okay…and why are _you_ in on this?” Sam turned her attention back to Ashley, who simply shrugged as she took a bite of a chicken strip.

“Honestly?” She covered her mouth daintily with her hand, “Looks good on a résumé if you know how to fudge the wording around.” Before Sam could ask, she swallowed and launched into her explanation. “‘Experience researching historical and contemporary events, knowledge of urban myths and legends, proficiency with photo and film equipment _and_ editing software, experience acting with a private community company…’” 

A nudging shoulder cut her off. “Ash is a _pro_ when it comes to turning shit into professional development. Or extra credit.” There was obvious fondness in Chris’s tone.

“Or _both_.” Nudging him in return, she reached towards his shake and waggled her fingers until he handed it over to her so she could try it, stealing _hers_ in return.

And for a short time, that was that. The table went relatively quiet as the four of them ate. Sam pretended not to notice the way the other three would sneak covert looks in her direction every so often.

Well wasn’t _this_ a fine kettle of fish? If it had started out as _them_ interviewing _her_, it had quickly turned into a beast of a different sort; now _they_ were the ones waiting for acceptance or rejection, wondering whether the night’s events had been a wasted effort. And though she could sense the weight of their anticipation from all around her, Sam took her sweet time trying to sort out everything in her head.

To be sure, this wasn’t the kind of thing she was known to do…her _usual_ extracurriculars had always been a bit more…_traditional_. Hiking, volunteering to pick up litter, leading summer camps, lifeguarding at the city pool back home...

The thought of hanging around in other people’s homes—or, God help her—abandoned buildings, playing pretend and hamming it up for a camera was a foreign idea. Fuck, it was _alien!_

Add into the mix how _very_ little she liked the thought of ghosts or hauntings, of even _joking_ about contacting the dead, and well, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. No part of this was something she _ever_ would’ve considered doing.

Which was probably why she knew she was going to do it.

After everything that had happened in the last year, maybe putting some space between herself and the person she used to be was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe stepping out of her comfort zone would be good for her!

And maybe she’d end up getting tetanus in an old warehouse and dying—it was definitely going to be one or the other. 

She lifted her glass of water to her mouth and considered her words carefully, clearing her throat once she’d taken a sip. “Well, uh, I think I can safely say tonight’s been one of the absolute _strangest_ things I’ve ever been a part of.”

“If I had a nickel for every time a woman said _that_ to me…” Chris started, going broodily silent when Josh audibly kicked him under the table.

“Is strange good or bad?” 

Sam shrugged coolly, folding her arms atop the table. “Not sure. The jury’s still out on that one.”

“Fair enough.”

Again, she took in the sight of the three of them, these mismatched geeks she’d somehow stumbled upon, and again she was struck by the bizarre notion that she’d found herself at their table for some reason. Accidentally on purpose, perhaps…or purposely accidental.

God, she hoped there was more to it than that crunchy mumbo-jumbo bullshit. At the very least, she was feeling significantly more confident that they weren’t a sex cult, so that was _something_. It was a _start_. Still wasn’t too sure they weren’t going to steal her organs, though. That one would require more time.

“So…” She set her chin on her hand, slowly letting her own smirk take shape. “Am I gonna have to fill out any paperwork or…?”

Just slightly, Josh’s eyes narrowed. “Like exit paperwork? Some kinda NDA? Something promising you’re not gonna waltz around spilling our secrets to the world at large?”

“Eh…I was thinking more along the lines of like…do you guys need to know what size I wear, so we can all have matching uniforms next time?”

There was a beat where the table went silent again. And then Josh’s grin spread across his face, toothy and victorious and just a _little_ (fake) bloody. “Aw _shit_…matching uniforms would be _legit_.” He snickered before offering her his hand, giving her fingers a squeeze. “Welcome aboard, Sammy! Hope you’re good and ready to get CREEPed out.”

“Eugh. I’m having second thoughts, all of a sudden.”

“Sucks to be you—the pact has been fuckin’ _made_.” His grin only widened when she pulled her hand away, only to discover her palm smeared in thick, sticky corn syrup. “Can’t break a blood oath, Giddings. No takesies-backsies.”


	5. Something weird (and it don't look good)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Ashley make contact with something...unexpected.

She stood outside the door to 10B with her phone in hand, staring thoughtfully at the nameplate. It had been about a week (give or take) since she’d knocked on it for the first time, a week since she’d been pulled into the strange interview process, a week since Chris had learned sometimes ‘Sam’ was short for ‘Samantha.’ A whole _week_…

And she still had no godly idea who Conrad was, or why he owed Josh $50.

Maybe _that_ was a question Ash’s Ouij—ahem, _spirit board_—could answer.

“Here we go…” Sam muttered to herself, rapping her knuckles against the door. No muffled arguing that time, but she could hear footsteps growing nearer and nearer until the door swung open.

“Hey Sam!” Ashley looked as cheerful as she’d ever seen her, eyes bright despite the dark smudges of her makeup. “Your timing is _impeccable_, I swear! Chris is just finishing some stuff up, and then we’ll have something to show you…c’mon in!” She took a step back so Sam could skirt around her, shutting the door behind them. “You have classes today?”

“Eh, just a lab. No big. _Seriously_ ready for midterms to be over.” She unslung her bag from her shoulder and set it down in front of the couch, returning the brief half-wave Chris flicked her from the corner desk. Her eyes slid to the setup in the middle of the common room: A table had been moved out and surrounded by chairs, a camera looming menacingly on a tripod as it stared down at the strange, opalescent surface of Ashley’s spirit board. It was like the townhouse all over again.

“—ight? _I_ made the mistake of taking like, _way_ too many credit hours—I’m honestly at twenty-one—and midterms are just—”

“Hey Ash?” Some part of her felt badly for not listening to her…but she had the distinct feeling Ashley was more than used to it. If nothing else, she didn’t seem _insulted_ by Sam’s interruption. “What’s, uh…what’s going on here?”

Laughing, she braced her hands on the back of one of the chairs, smiling down at the scene with something like pride. “Oh! I figured as long as you’d be here to see the video, I could show you how the board really works! It’s _way_ easier to get if I _show_ you than if I try to just explain without visuals.” Her shoulders gave a happy little wiggle before she looked up at Sam again and cleared her throat self-consciously. “I mean…if you _want to_. If you don’t, that’s totally cool, too…I just thought…”

“As long as you _promise_ me it’s not actual dead people doing the spelling, I would _love_ a hands-on demo.”

“Can anyone _really_ promise that there won’t be _any_ ghostly interference? _Should_ any of us be so _bold?_ I ask you!” Chris knocked one of the cups of his headphones off as he spun around in his chair. “We actually have a guarantee here in the CREEP-quarters, Sam. If any of us _ever_ find irrefutable proof of life after death, the rest of us have to pay off their student loans.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “That’s a _guarantee_, huh?”

“Yeeeup.”

“High stakes.”

“Yeah, well. Between you and me?” He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper, “I’m not too worried. Know why?”

Sam traded a brief glance with Ashley, who simply rolled her eyes in response, per the usual. “Is it…because ghosts aren’t real?”

He flashed her a double-pistols and a wink before clicking his tongue twice.

“Don’t let _Josh_ hear you saying that…” Ashley joked, tweaking Chris’s ear as she approached the computers. She leaned herself against one of his armrests, “Ready to show her?”

“Only if she’s ready to have her mind _blown!_”

Joining them at the computer, Sam stood herself to Chris’s other side with a wry smile, “I think I can handle it.”

“I dunno…you got _awfully_ freaked when you saw it happening in person…”

“Oh I’m sorry,” she laughed, “Should I have read your minds to know it was a sham?”

“Maybe! Would’ve made _my_ job easier…”

“Hey, the psychic thing is _my_ shtick,” Ashley cut in, “No one else gets to be psychic.” She let out a groan when he hit play, quickly reaching over to take the mouse; she fought Chris’s hand away, ignoring his protests, and skipped forward about a minute. “Ugh! Fast forward past the opening, it’s _so bad!_”

“It’s _fine_.” Chris’s voice had taken on an impudent edge that Sam didn’t buy for one second. He had let Ashley wrest all control of the mouse from him, and unless she was mistaken, she thought he suddenly looked a little flushed. “Besides, we’re gonna have to shoot a new one now that we’ve got the newbie, over here.”

Ugh, _that_ was something she hadn’t considered. “Aw man, I don’t want some big, dramatic production…”

“Then you’ve joined the wrong team.” Chris snapped his fingers in her face before pointing to the screen. “Ix-nay on the omplaining-cay, and watch this masterpiece, wouldya?”

As much as she hated to admit it (and she _did_ hate to admit it), the video was…good. It would never win an Oscar, obviously, but there was something undeniably _fun_ about the whole thing. 

There was a sort of charm in the way all of the footage had been cut together, Josh’s voice narrating what was _undoubtedly_ a script written by Ashley, the interviews and shouts and flickering lights all coalescing into a story that definitely _had not been present_ when the filming had happened. Every so often, she’d open her mouth to ask a question (“Did you _actually_ record that voice in the basement?” “Was that face _actually_ in the photograph when you took it?”) and more often than not, Chris would explain it away before she’d gotten all the words out.

After their ‘investigation,’ Josh had described what they did as ‘innovative producing.’ Sam thought she was beginning to understand what that meant.

She looked away from the screen when the credits started to roll, instead watching the other two with a fair amount of interest. “So…you take _this_ back to the people who called you…”

“Tell them all’s well that ends well, they _had_ a ghost or two but now they don’t…then _Ash_ says some vague yoga-class shit about airing out all the negative energy in the house, and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, we stick this shit online—with the clients’ reactions, of course—and let the clicks roll in!”

“And, uh…” She drummed her fingers against the chair, “_Do_ the clicks roll in?”

“No.”

“Not really.”

Neither Chris nor Ashley sounded _exceptionally_ disappointed by it. If anything, they sort of just sounded…bored.

Huh.

That was…well, it was _something_. Hell if Sam could figure out what that something _was_, though.

She considered asking _why_ they thought they weren’t that popular, but already Ash was talking again, answering her as though _actually_ psychic. “Josh tends to go _way_ overboard with the blood and stuff. You didn’t see that the other night because he was on his best behavior,” she lowered her voice to a flat drone, “Believe it or not…” Chris nudged her, she nudged him back, and then she cleared her throat again, “Ugh. Look, sometimes it’s just _way_ too much, and that’s not what people want to _see!_”

“Well,” Chris interjected, absently pushing Ashley away from his chair (to Sam, it looked more like an attempt to get a reaction out of her than any _real_ desire to have her move away), “_Some_ people _do_ want to see that stuff! _Some _people are really, really, _distressingly_ into it. But unfortunately, those people aren’t what you want your core demographic to be, if you catch my drift.”

“Is that where _I’m_ supposed to come in?” Sam asked, “Am I here just to veto the fake blood budget?”  
  
“It’ll definitely _help_. Josh has all these big ideas for how to get more views, so I’m _suuure_ he’ll be gushing all about that with you later…” Ashley dropped her chin into her hands, still resting her weight against the armrest of Chris’s chair. “‘Course, according to him, now that we have a _‘pretty girl_’ as a team member, we’ll do great no matter what.”

With a low groan, Chris glanced down towards the keyboard, idly tapping at the keys. By Sam’s count, he’d saved the video about thirty times before closing the software. “You know he was just being a dick with that…”

“Uh huh.”

“You _are_ a pretty girl, Ash.”

“Mhm.”

“You are! You’re like…” _He_ was the one to drop his voice that time, and he went to take a drink from the can on his desk as though to hide his mouth. “…really, _really_ pretty…”

Sam looked between the two of them, struck with the impression that she was missing a good chunk of context. She wasn’t about to touch that one. Nope. Not with a ten-foot pole. “Mind if I ask why _this?_” Changing the topic felt so much better. “Like, why _ghosts?_ Are people looking for ghost stuff nowadays, or…?”

Chris _also_ seemed more than happy to change the subject. “Funny you should ask…” he muttered into the can.

“Oh, this is gonna take some time…do you _have _time?” Ashley was a little _too _excited when she turned to Sam, ticking things off on her fingers. “Well _first, _these bozos tried a comedy channel. I think I mentioned that the other night. Thought they were _real _funny.” Over Chris’s head, she mouthed ‘They’re not.’ “So _that _didn’t work. Then, when the Let’s Play craze hit, they tried that! _Also_ did not work.”

“To be _fair_, that one wasn’t my fault.” Chris looked helplessly up at her, “Josh is _shit_ at games. He’ll say he’s not. He is. He couldn’t even get past the opening sequence of Outlast! And okay, sure, an argument can be made that those controls are _shit_, but—” At that, he actually appeared to _struggle, _“—it was a _tutorial!_ It was on the _easiest settings!_ Eventually you’re just like, ‘Bro, _admit_ you suck and let’s move on, it’s _fine_, we’re _friends,_ here!’”

As she stared at Sam, Ashley’s expression remained coolly exasperated, suggesting that this was what most of their conversations devolved into. ‘_See what I mean?_’ she seemed to say as she gestured towards him. “They tried parkour when it was big, tried prank videos, there was a _real_ rough time back in high school when they tried to do a _cooking_ channel…”

Chris went relatively pensive. Slowly, a grimace tugged at the edges of his mouth. “Yeah, enough time has passed where I think we can all agree that _maybe_ that one was a _little_ ill-advised.”

Ashley sighed. “Two words: Grease. Fires.”

“Wait, plural?!” Sam was _agog_.

“Plural.”

“Yeah, yeah, real funny. Rub it in. Go ahead! See if I care. I don’t. We _tried_, which is what _matters_.” He cocked his head to the side in a decidedly mischievous sort of way, fixing Ashley with an inquisitive, almost childlike stare. “Oh but hey, Ash? While you’re doing that, talking about all the shit _we_ tried to do, why don’t you go ahead and tell Sam—”

“They _also_,” she began again, raising her voice in an attempt to speak over him…

To no avail. Though he was looking at Sam, Chris raised a hand, moving it around to his side until he somehow miraculously managed to find Ashley’s face, covering her mouth as best he could. “Before you get the wrong impression about our K/D ratio here on the team, I’d like to inform you that our dear, sweet Ashley Brown here has _also_ had a few failed attempts at internet fame.” Ashley was doing her best to wrench his hand off of her mouth, but it absolutely was not happening. “Do you wanna tell her?” he asked jokingly over his shoulder, “Or should I?”

Her scowl was obvious. Her words were muffled.

Chris shrugged and turned back to Sam with a good-natured grin. “I’ll just go ahead and tell you. So there was…the book review vlog, which really didn’t do so hot…and then there was the writing tips vlog, which did a _littttttle_ better, but I still probably wouldn’t recommend…then there was the channel devoted to…” he turned back to Ash again, still feigning his innocence, “Now remind me real quick, was it that you were reading and reviewing _other people’s_ fanfiction, or was it _your own?_ You know me, I’m so _bad_ at remembering these things—” 

She finally managed to wriggle out of his grasp, pushing away from the desk to stalk towards the table setup instead. “Ha _ha_.” Ashley’s face was bright red as she spat the words out. “What_ever_. The point _is…_after all that, Josh suggested the whole ghost hunting thing. And I mean, since he already _had_ all this stuff lying around…” Realization dawned on her, tempering some of the color in her cheeks, “Oh crap, did you know that? I guess not, huh? It’s not like we really talked about our family stuff together, shoot…”

Sam blinked. “Um…?”

“Josh’s dad makes horror movies,” Chris explained. “The gory kind _you_ probably don’t watch, given how easily spooked you are.”

“Wow…seriously?” It sure made a lot of sense…not many people showed that sort of _glee_ when talking about scaring other people. “That’s really cool!”

A sigh from Ashley. “Not nearly as cool as you might think. But yeah, he already had all this stuff, and all the professional cameras, and since he and Chris have been making stupid videos together since they were kids, we all figured hey, why not? Let him go back to his roots and have some fun.”

Maybe she’d only imagined it, but…Sam could’ve _sworn _the two of them shared a nervous, secretive look at that, as though acknowledging an inside joke. Or inside _knowledge_.

Again, she didn’t ask. Initiated or not, she doubted she’d reached the point where they’d start unveiling their tragic backstories to her if only she picked the right dialogue option. _She_ wasn’t about to offer hers up, that much was for damn sure.

“And now, here we are!” Dropping his hands onto his lap, Chris stretched his back out. “Sitting around. Photoshopping skulls into old photos. What a life we lead. Truly we are blessed.” He checked his watch and frowned. “Shit! That took _forever!_ Okay, fuck this, I’m gonna make a food run. You just want the usual, Ash?”

“Ooh! Yeah, please and thanks!”

He glanced over to Sam, tapping a couple things on his phone before handing it over to her. “Hungry? If you write down what you’re feeling, I’ll grab it for you. Probably gonna hit the sandwich place up the street.”

Surprised, she took the phone from him, slipping her own into her pocket. “You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure! CREEPs gotta eat.”

“Thanks!” She quickly typed in her order, handing him the phone again. It was hard to place _exactly_ what did it…but a wave of déjà vu washed over her as she watched Chris get up and slip his shoes on. Something about the typing, maybe, or having seen all the spooky details he’d edited into the footage…

Either way, a shudder worked its way up her spine, finger-walking its way over each vertebra.

“Hey, one quick thing on the topic of CREEPs...”

He barely turned over his shoulder as he fished around for his car keys. “Yeah?”

“I haven’t mentioned it until now, but I didn’t really appreciate the trick you pulled with the application page. Like, I get it, you’re _scary ghost hunters_—”

“Paranormal researchers!” Ashley corrected sharply.

“…whatever. But the whole…making my computer freeze up until I hit ‘submit’ deal? _Super_ uncool.” Sam tried not to bristle, wanting to keep her tone jovial despite the shivers the memory brought out, “Thought I had a virus or something.”

When he turned to her, Chris was laughing, eyebrows high. “I got no clue what you’re talking about, Sam. Ash wouldn’t let me or Josh anywhere _near_ that posting.”

“Uh huh,” she said. That didn’t pass her smell-test. “Whatever you say. But for future reference, it was sort of a dick move.” 

“Read you loud and clear.” And he nodded along with her, even chuckled a bit, but it was impossible to ignore the itty bitty hint of confusion in his expression. If Sam didn’t know better, she might’ve thought he seemed…_unsettled_.

There wasn’t time for her to dwell on it—he was gone a second later, the latch of the door clicking behind him, and Ashley clapped her hands together excitedly.

“So! While that doofus is out and we finally have some _peace_…want me to show you the board?” She turned away from the door, her smile wavering uncertainly when she saw the look on Sam’s face. “…um…what?”

It only took a second to shake herself out mentally; she returned Ashley’s earlier smile, shrugging as she took a seat at the head of the board. “Nothing! Nothing…” Tilting her head, she tried to get a better look at the letters, all turned upside down by her vantage point. She didn’t want to get into it, so she pressed her luck, poking at what she was quickly coming to suspect was a soft spot. “You guys are just _sweet_, that’s all!”

Ashley’s brow furrowed and Sam could—_aha_. She could see the cogs turning in her brain. This was going to be a _very_ interesting group dynamic to figure out.

“Oh, um…th-thanks…?” she laughed softly, wasting no time in taking her seat. Hand hovering over the planchette, she met Sam’s gaze evenly. “The long and short of this is…magnets!” She was talking a little _too_ quickly, suggesting that yup, Sam had hit on _some_ sort of nerve. “I can’t explain _all_ of it because _Josh_ is the one who makes the props, so it’s more his deal than mine, but…magnets. They’re in the board _and_ the planchette, which is why both are a _teeny_ bit thicker than normal. No one ever really notices that, though, because people don’t typically touch spirit boards every day. They’re also _super_ strong—the magnets—so once they’re on…or engaged…ugh, whatever, like I said, I don’t do the specifics…once they’re engaged, it can be powerful enough to like, _resist_ you.”

“Oookay…” Sam peered down at it doubtfully. “Sure. Makes sense. But how do you get it to…say things? Do you program it? Or…?”

Her grin was back in full force. “That’s _super_ easy…as long as there’s a camera on the board—” she pointed to the tripod between them, “—then whoever’s _not_ at the table can control the planchette remotely. Sooo…” Ashley placed her pointer finger on the planchette, motioning for Sam to do the same, her eyes flicking between hers and the board. “Once everyone is suitably shaken up, or creeped out, or…_whatever_, I can ask literally _anything_ I want, no real script needed, and they can make it so I get an answer that makes sense! I mean, unless we don’t _want_ the answer to make sense…sometimes you don’t, you know…you want it to be ominous or vague or—” Under their fingers, the planchette gave a sharp warning wiggle, making Sam cry out, while Ashley just rolled her eyes. “I get it, I get it!” she called out to no one in particular. Then, lowering her voice, “I swear…how do they expect you to _learn_ if—”

Wiggle wiggle.

Even knowing it was nothing more than a party trick, Sam couldn’t help but to stare down at the board wide-eyed. Call it psychological conditioning, call it suggestibility, call it superstition, call it _anything_ the CREEP squad wanted to—there was something eerie about _feeling_ the pointer move under her hand.

“You get used to it.” When she glanced back up, Ashley was smiling again; there wasn’t any mockery in it, though, and that was a relief and a half. She just seemed…what? Excited? Maybe tickled by the prospect of bringing someone else in on the joke?

Whatever the case was, Sam returned the smile. Sure, it was shaky at first, but as she watched Ashley assume her doom-and-gloom persona, shaking her head and furrowing her brow to get into the act, that shakiness gave way to slumber party exhilaration. 

“Okay…um…is there anyone here who would like to speak to us?” asked Ashley’s small, tremulous voice. “Does anyone have a message to share with us?”

The planchette began to move under their fingers, forming wide and sloping circles around the length of the board.

“Oh, this is…_so wrong_.” Even as she said it, Sam felt her grin widening. It was half nerves, she thought, and half amusement, the same mixture to blame for the frantic giggles she was swallowing down.

“O spirits,” Ashley continued, absolutely unshaken by Sam’s interruption, “We mean you no harm. And no disrespect! Will you speak with us?" 

Slowly—so very _slowly_—the planchette slid up…and up…and up some more, until the viewfinder rested directly over YES.

Sam couldn’t decide what she wanted to do _more_: keep her eyes on the board, watch Ashley’s (admittedly captivating) performance, or twist around in her seat to try and see if she could still spot Chris’s shadow under the front door. He must’ve been _right there_.

“Thank you, spirits. Are you in need of help?”

The planchette moved a bit more quickly as it glided over NO.

“I see…um…did you die in this apartment building?”

It dipped slightly, then popped up to NO again.

Ashley hummed an uncertain sound, her lips pursing. “Do you have a message for us, spirit?”

YES. 

Unable to hold it back any longer, Sam shuddered. “_God,_ this is weird.” 

Across from her, Ashley’s face went grim, almost mournful. “All right…what is this message you wish to communicate to us?”

When the planchette moved that time, it was _entirely_ different. Instead of the slow, smooth motions from before, it jerked so abruptly that Sam nearly fell out of her seat in surprise.

She could hear Ashley’s breath speed up into the terrified hyperventilation of a horror movie heroine. Her voice shook as she called out each letter the pointer picked. “K-I…” Sam had to hand it to her, the fear in her tone was _heartbreakingly_ believable.  
  
Or at least it _was_.

Right up until the pointer moved again.

The letter she’d expected (and the letter _Ashley_ had expected, it seemed) was obviously L. As in ‘KILL.’ A scary, if not clichéd, response to receive from a spirit board.

Ashley’s voice, and therefore her act, broke when the viewfinder _instead_ showed… “S-S.” She sat silently for a second, finger still on the planchette, expression melting into, uh, well, _not_ the dour mask of a medium. “KISS.”

“Uh…” Sam looked up from the board to meet Ashley’s eyes. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, feeling absolutely idiotic, considering the circumstances, she glanced into middle space above the table, head craned slightly. “Like…each other?” 

The planchette zipped back to YES.

It was then that Ashley removed her finger altogether. She folded her arms across her chest with a frustrated scowl, staring up to the ceiling. “Well _that_ answered my _next_ question.” She spoke far too brightly for her grimace. “I was _going_ to ask your name, o mysterious spirit, but I think I can guess it, actually.”

Sam watched, more than slightly amused, as the planchette continued to fly across the board, zooming between H and A over and over again. She pulled her hand back like Ashley had, and yup—it just kept going.

“Any _other_ messages, spirit?” Ashley’s voice went flat as day-old Pepsi. “I’m sure you have _tons _of _really useful_ stuff to say.”

There was no hiding her laughter when she watched the planchette playfully bounce between letters without them touching it. “U-U-P,” Sam read out, trying and failing to keep the glee out of her voice. “W-Y-D.”

“Goodbye, spirit,” Ashley called out.

“A-S-L,” Sam giggled, the pointer spinning in quick circles.

Groaning, Ashley slammed her entire hand onto the planchette, appearing to struggle against the magnets briefly before forcing the viewfinder over GOODBYE. “I said, _GOODBYE, SPIRIT!_”

From one of the bedrooms came the sound of a door slamming open. Sam didn’t yell that time around, but she _did_ whirl around fast enough to make the muscles of her neck seize up in agony. She clutched at the tendons with a choked whine, rubbing the stiffness away as they were joined at the table.

“Hey ladies!” Josh dropped himself into one of the open chairs, sitting in it backwards like the cool kid in a 90’s sitcom. “Ooh, having a little séance?” Again, Sam had to give it to them—dorks though they were, it was clear they had some serious acting chops—you’d never, _ever_ guess by his voice that Josh was anything but oblivious to what had just happened. “Contact anyone interesting? Or…any_thing _interesting?”

The glare Ashley fixed him with was so withering that Sam was surprised when he didn’t immediately crumble into a pile of dust. “Interesting? No. Not even close.”

He clucked his tongue in disappointment. “Aw man, you hate to hear that. Well…was any wisdom imparted unto you by the spirit world?” Before Ashley had _any_ opportunity to shoot a scathing reply his way, Josh turned to Sam and lowered his voice into a hushed murmur. “Y’know, Sammy, I don’t know if Ash made you aware of this, but it’s _unspeakably_ important that you do _everything_ the board tells you to.”

She made an attempt to mask her smile…but that was all it was. An attempt. “Oh yeah?” she asked, feigning interest. “Everything, huh?”

He nodded seriously, going so far as to tuck the corners of his mouth down into a sagely, if not exaggerated, frown. “The consequences of going against the directives of the spirit world could be…” He let out a worried breath, cheeks puffing with the effort, almost as if the knowledge was weighing heavily on him. “They could be _calamitous_.” 

“Uh huh.”

“World-ending, even.”

“You don’t say.”

“So whatever the creepies and crawlies were saying to you girls, I just…I really hope you take it to heart, that’s all. For all of our sakes.”

Ashley blinked in his direction, the living antithesis to Sam’s delight—she looked about as entertained as a parent discovering their child with their head stuck between railing posts. Her eyebrows arched upwards when Josh turned to her. “_So_,” she said (much more forcefully than entirely necessary, Sam noticed), “That’s how we use the spirit board. Show her the thing.” 

“_Thing?_ What _thing?_” Chin in hands, elbows on the table, Josh all but batted his eyelashes at her. “Oh…oh wait…” he pretended to be aghast, pressing a hand firmly to his heart. “Did you think _I_ was controlling that? Oh holy shit. Oh _holy_ shit! I was taking a nap! Do you know what this means? Ghosts are REA—”

Her hand shot out to grab his wrist. “_This_,” Ashley told Sam, flipping his hand over to reveal what looked—to her, at least—like some sort of beefed-up joy buzzer affixed to his palm. “_That’s_ why we need a camera on it. They can see where they’re moving the planchette by the camera’s feed. Easy peasy.”

“Wait…how did that get on my hand?! Ash, I mean it, I was just sleeping—”

“Blow it out your nose.”

“Really! I _was!_ I—”

Keys jingled in the front door’s lock, followed by the familiar sound of plastic bags being rustled about. “Yoyoyo…so hey, minor ish…they were out of Dr. Pepper, so I had to get you root beer instead, Ash, but like…they’re pretty much the same thing anyway, so…” Chris appeared from around the bend, balancing a drink carrier on his hand, the bag of food hanging from the crook of his elbow. “And the cashier was that guy who always—” He stopped talking abruptly, no doubt taken aback by their impromptu huddle. “Oh. I see how it is.” With a sassy head bobble, he set his free hand on his hip, keys jangling against his side. “I leave the house for _five minutes_, and you guys go and contact the dead without me! Wow. Just _wow_. You think you _know_ someone…”

_This_ was what she’d signed up for, huh?

“You’re all morons,” Ashley stated simply, taking special care as she picked up the board, balancing the planchette on top of it, and tucking it away into its box.

“Ouch.” Chris pulled in a sharp breath to signal his anguish. “You wou—hey, hey Ash?” He angled his body away from her as she made to grab for her drink. “You _wound_ me.”

“Women. Am I right, Cochise?”

“Can’t live with—_ow!_ Aggressive!” He let Ash take her drink from the cardboard holder, but only after a second of fake whimpering when she flicked his shoulder. “Should I take it the spirits were being testy today?”

“‘Testy’ is an interesting word choice.” Sam plucked her cup from the holder as Chris walked past the table. “Not the word _I’d_ use, but…”

He set their food down where the board had been, gaze still flicking back and forth between the three of them. After a beat, his eyes narrowed behind the lenses of his glasses, suggesting he’d realized…_something_. Snorting a low laugh, Chris jammed his straw into the lid of his drink. “_Told you_ they wouldn’t do it, man.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “Uh, for your information, I was making some serious progress, before _someone_ so rudely interrupted.”

“No you weren’t.”

“_Yes_, I _was_.”

“No,” Ashley repeated, already munching on a fry as she rummaged through the bag, looking for the rest of her food. “You weren’t.”

Sam sat back, exclaiming a dramatic “Oho!” when Chris held his hand out; she threw her arms into the air when Josh then, begrudgingly, pushed a crumpled $5 bill into his palm. “Classy! _Real_ classy, boys.”

“I’m sorry…you were expecting _honor_ from the fake ghost hunters?” Chris pocketed his winnings and took an overly loud slurp from his straw. “That was your _first_ mistake.”

“No, my _first_ mistake was agreeing to be a part of this…this…this whole…” 

“Hootenanny?” Chris offered.

“Farce?” Ashley tried. 

“Business venture?” Josh piped in.

“Shitshow.”

A chorus of “_Ooh_”s followed that. And then…a rumble of general agreement.

The others went about separating their orders out, but Sam stayed where she was, leaned far back in her chair, head shaking as she smiled inwardly. Hoo boy, this was what she’d signed up for, all right—these three weirdos and their bizarre bullshit. God, if someone had told her a year ago that this would be where she’d end up…

She was shaken out of her thoughts when Josh leaned over to steal some of her fries. Without thinking, she jabbed him in the side with her elbow. He pulled a face that seemed to suggest she’d punctured his heart before letting out a pathetic groan of agony; Chris snorted a laugh, then Ash giggled with a roll of her eyes, and then suddenly they were _all_ laughing, surrounded by greasy wrappers and pricy film equipment.

Yeah, okay, so maybe a year ago she wouldn’t have believed this would be where she’d end up, or who she’d be hanging out with, or what she’d be doing, but…but she hadn’t laughed that hard in a _grip_. 

So even if it meant being a CREEP, even if it meant ghosts (fake and horny though they were), she’d take it.

She’d fucking take it.


	6. Who ya gonna call? (Reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes a new...friend?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to all of my dear, lovely, amazing friends who, upon hearing me talk about my fav Until Dawn/Man of Medan crossover ship, laughed as though I was joking.
> 
> I was not.

“Are you guys planning anything stupid tonight?”

“No idea what you could mean.”

Turning, Sam watched Ashley roll her eyes. The two of them had sat themselves in the trunk as the guys unloaded the equipment, letting their legs swing over the lip of the SUV; each time a particularly weighty bag was removed, the car’s shocks compensated, making them bounce gently up and down as though they were on a boat. Ashley met her gaze tiredly, but Sam didn’t fully understand _why_.

Of _course_ they were planning something stupid—their whole _setup_ was stupid. They were _hunting ghosts_.

No, wait, hang on…they were _pretending_ to hunt ghosts.

Stupidity was a prerequisite.

Her eyes moved from Sam’s face to dead air. “I mean it.” She raised her voice, swiveling to fix Chris with a firm look when he reached past her for a bag. “I get that Josh wants believable reactions and all that, but if you’re gonna pull something, you gotta at least _warn_ Sam. She still doesn’t know what’s a shitty trick you guys are doing, and what might be an actual, y’know…_emergency_.”

“Sam’s _fine!_” Chris dragged the last bag from the very back, letting it rest at the edge of trunk between them. “She signed the permission slip and everything! Paid the $10 field trip fee, waived the right to sue us in case of bodily harm…” He dropped her a wink before going perfectly rigid, the shock on his face comedic…aaand maybe just a _little_ pathetic.

Without any warning, Ashley had leaned herself forward to wrap herself around him. To Sam, it looked to be a very tight (and very _intimate_) hug, Ashley’s hands sliding up and down Chris’s back once, fingers creeping, creeping…moving across the fabric of his sweatshirt like curious spider legs.

“…oh yeah? This is what we’re gonna do? Right in front of me? Really?” Sam leaned against the frame of the car, eyebrows high and grin _jubilant_ as she watched Chris’s face turn red enough to seem painful. Shit, she could almost feel the heat radiating off of him from where she sat.

Not even a second later, Ashley pulled back, the corners of her mouth tucked in angrily. Her expression was absolutely that of a teacher catching a student in a real whopper of a lie. “You’re a jerk,” she said, giving him a shove that sent him stumbling back a step. “Seriously. You’re a _jerk_.”

“I, uh, I d—Ash…”

If she had _actually_ wanted Chris to say something to that, Sam thought, she shouldn’t have pulled _that_ move. True, she hadn’t known the two of them for that long, but it was _still_ obvious to her that few things could shut Chris up faster than Ashley being that close to him. It was as though if she squinted hard enough, she might be able to make out text scrolling down the lenses of his glasses: TOTAL SYSTEM SHUTDOWN ENGAGED.

Whether or not _Ashley_ noticed that, though, remained to be seen. She hissed a frustrated breath through her teeth before telling Sam, “If you haven’t gone through _all_ of our stuff online yet,” and oops, she definitely hadn’t, “…just know there are…_other_ things that we do, okay? Besides the spirit board, I mean. So if anything happens tonight that seems—” she stopped long enough to shoot Chris an esoteric glare, “—_really_ upsetting, please just know it’s these meatballs pulling something, and _not_ a real emergency.”

Ominous.

Didn’t like that.

No, she didn’t like that _at all_.

“Uh…” It was the most intelligent thing she could muster up in the moment. There were a _lot_ of things that could’ve been alluding to, and God help her, she doubted any of them would be particularly _fun_.

Chris cleared his throat, tried to talk…and then cleared his throat _again_ when his voice cracked like a fourteen-year-old’s. “Don’t call 911. That’s what she’s saying.”

“Yeah,” Ashley muttered. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Sam’s eyes flicked up to the looming silhouette of the campus library. What could they _possibly_ have planned _here?_ It was a public place where there would absolutely be other people hanging around. The townhouse crap had made sense, but this?

She just couldn’t figure this one out.

From where he’d been inspecting a bag on the concrete, Josh popped up like a Whack-A-Mole. “Whoa whoa whoa—who’s calling 911?”

Groaning, Ashley hopped down onto the ground. She straighted her hoodie out before walking past him, saying “No one,” in an exasperated singsong. “Couldn’t we have done this _any_ other week? You realize it’s gonna be packed with people cramming and working on last-minute midterm projects.”

He only grinned in response.

“Ugh. You are _so_ lucky that I don’t need to study. And that I’ve already come to terms with being a total social pariah.” She rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time (Sam wondered how Ash didn’t get dizzy, what with all that eye-rolling) before grabbing one of the bags and slinging it over her shoulder. “_And_ that no one likes going on the upper floors.”

_That_ got Sam’s attention. Real quick. She got down from the trunk, Chris wasting no time in pulling the hatch shut behind her, and glanced towards the library. “I’m sorry—did you say we’re going up there?” Her finger pointed vaguely upwards, but it was clear at once what she meant.

The library was a formidable beast built of khaki-colored brick, standing proudly as the tallest building on campus. If one was bored enough (or stoned enough) to take the time to count the rows of windows, they’d find seventeen in all. But only _thirteen_ of those were illuminated. Only thirteen were _ever_ illuminated, it seemed.

Maybe she was still fairly new to the school, but local superstition had a funny way of seeping into the public consciousness—even _Sam_ knew every floor from 14 on was rumored to be awful in some way. You didn’t study on those floors, you didn’t roam those shelves, and hoo boy, you did _not_ use those bathrooms unless you wanted to die.

As she looked to the other three, she saw how very _un_daunted they appeared. Great. Fantastic.

“Do we, uh…need to…tell anyone we’re going up there?” She turned her phone over and over in her hand; those days, the action was more a tic than anything else.

“Sure do,” Chris said. It was obvious he was trying to sound chipper…but the crack was still perfectly evident in his voice.

One hug, hmm? Man oh man, _someone_ had it bad.

Sam made a note of that.

She knelt down to grab the last of the bags, heaving it onto her back as their bizarre little group stepped into the overwhelming fluorescents of the library’s entrance. By that point, she knew better than to ask too many questions. The answers, stupid though they usually were, always came to her, in the end.

There were few things as depressing as a library during midterms. People hunched themselves over computers, stared soullessly at textbooks, yelled at the printer, napped on benches…

She could absolutely buy this kinda place being haunted. There was more chaotic, lawless energy in there than any haunted house Hollywood had ever tried to film.

They were lucky enough to get an elevator all to themselves—a relief that was really all about _space_. Not _one_ person they had passed had so much as batted an eye at their bags and electronics. As though reading her mind, Josh leaned down to Sam’s ear and quietly muttered, “A real-ass ghoulie could go _flying_ through here right now, rattling chains, moaning, the whole nine yards, and I don’t think _any_ of these sad sacks would fuckin’ _flinch_.” The doors slid shut with a soft _ding_ right as he said it, and under their feet, the elevator heaved itself up.

“Some people take academics seriously, you know,” Sam snickered, quirking an eyebrow in his direction. “We can’t _all_ stake our futures on internet fame and fortune.”

Josh returned the laugh. “Oh, we lucky few.”

When she turned to see what floor they’d picked, she was only slightly taken aback. “Fourteen? Isn’t that one of the ones that had the lights turned off already?”

“_Sammy_…” Josh began again, voice tinged with good-natured disappointment. “You sh—”

“Most elevators don’t list the thirteenth floor _as_ the thirteenth floor. ‘Bad luck.’” Ashley cut a savage pair of finger-quotes into the air. “Everyone _knows_ there’s a thirteenth floor, though. It’s so stupid. They just _call_ it 14. I hate it.”

Sam tried not to laugh at the look on Josh’s face. It was a surprisingly difficult challenge. _Getting_ interrupted wasn’t as agreeable to him as being the interrupter, looked like…go figure. “Well, I’m terrified to ask this, but…why do we need to go to the thirteenth-not-fourteenth floor?”

That time, it was Chris who spoke up. “Gotta get someone to unlock the doors for us, obvs. Get with the program.” He angled himself towards Josh with a joking cluck of his tongue. “Man, who keeps inviting _her?_ I—” His eyes widened as he caught Sam’s stare. “Oh shit, I think she can hear us. Play it cool, play it cool…just act natural.”

Ashley looked _so tired_ when she met her eyes.

The elevator _ding_ed again, the doors opening to reveal a floor Sam had definitely never seen before. Not a single display as far as she could see. No quaint corkboards with flyers or campus-wide reminders. No potted plants. No _people_. Just faux-marble floor tiles, hygienically white walls, and the persistent hum of the overhead lights.

She walked out of the elevator with them…and found herself absolutely bowled over by the skin-crawling sensation of wrongness. “It is…_way_ too quiet up here. How—” she looked to each of them in turn, “—I—don’t you guys feel like we…I don’t know, like we shouldn’t be here?”

Taking a deep, deep breath, Ashley released a horrendously contented sigh. She spread her arms wide (like a _normal_ person might do when stepping into a patch of sunlight) and let her shoulders go slack with delight. “I _know!_ Isn’t it _great?_”

Sam just stared at the back of her head. No, it was not great. It was, in fact, supremely _not_ great. Showing up to an off-campus house had been awkward, sure, since they’d essentially traipsed their way through someone else’s living room for a night, but this was…ugh! The discomfort here was something else. Being up on the empty floor felt forbidden, like they were breaking some tenet of college law, or trespassing on sacred ground.

“Y’know, saying shit like that is why you got pigeonholed as the spooky goth chick.”

Ashley shot Chris a scathing glare.

“I’m just saying!”

Unsurprisingly, Josh took the lead, guiding them away from the elevators and past the bathrooms, stretching his arms out as he walked. “We wanna take bets on what batshit insane piece he’s wearing today?”

They were all words she recognized—really, they were. But something about the way Josh strung them all together, throwing them into that particular order, made absolutely zero sense to her. She was halfway through forming the word ‘who’ in her mouth when Chris laughed.

“Pocket watch, def! The one with the chain.”

“That’s not fair.” There was no reproach in Josh’s voice, only the frustration of a kid explaining the rules of a playground game. “He’s _always_ wearing that thing.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s why I said it.”

“You’re flagrantly going against the spirit of the game, Cochise.” He shook his head. “My bet? That weird vest thing. The one that’s like, dark in the front, but shiny in the back? You know which one I’m talking about? The back’s some awful green-yellow-chartreuse kinda deal?”

“Oh, I know it. Shit dude, that’s _specific!_”

“I’m feelin’ it tonight, what can I say? I know the man. I know his habits.”

“You guys are so mean.” Ashley’s voice came out as a tired sigh. “You better keep your voices down so he doesn’t hear you being bullies.”

Chris spun around to face them, pressing his hands to his face in a shoddy _Home Alone_ gasp, “_Bullies?_ How dare you! It doesn’t count as bullying when the person in question’s a total frea—”

“Dare I ask what manner of business has brought your merry band back to me?”

“_Ohjesusfuckingchrist!_” Chris very nearly fell over his own feet at the unexpected sound.

The voice the question had been spoken in was calm and low, crisp as a fall morning. There was the faintest hint of smoke to it…or maybe fog (Sam couldn’t make up her mind, but both felt poetically spooky enough to be true), colored with an accent that felt like camouflage among the stacks and shelves of old books.

The man behind the desk didn’t bother to raise his eyes from the forms laid out before him, and that only added to his general air of creepiness. He looked as though he’d stepped out of a novel, himself, probably something old and dusty—Dickensonian, perhaps—the kind of story where the men wore waistcoats and garters on their sleeves and frequently stole sips from hidden flasks. His face was weathered with age in such a way that she couldn’t decide whether she found him handsome or off-putting.

At least until he finally deigned to lift his gaze and she felt her blood run cold under eyes the color of a frozen lake.

The lines of his forehead deepened with interest as he focused in on her. In that moment, Sam found herself thinking the sad, tiny things that ran through the mind of a field mouse when the shadow of a hawk fell over it.

“…well, well. And so it appears you’ve found the missing member of your little venture. My advice to you, young lady?” He shut the binder in front of him with a dull _thump_. “Run while you still have the chance.”

She wanted to respond, wanted to say something, _do_ something, other than stare the way she was sure she was staring, but the presence of the man was just…just…a lot. She was a butterfly on a block, pinned by that gaze.

“Hey Ed,” Josh said flippantly, flicking a jaunty two-finger salute in his direction. “You know I _love_ the whole…” he gestured airily as he approached a shelf, running his hands along the spines of the books at face-level, “…ominous aura thing you’ve got going on, but if you could maybe refrain from scaring off the new meat, that would just be swell.” A book seemed to catch his attention, and he pulled it from its place to flip through it.

Ashley was the only one to go up to the desk, setting her hands down on the edge and leaning her weight against it. _That_ broke the strange spell on Sam—there was _Ash_, the most reserved of their number, resting herself against the desk and smiling at the man as though they were old friends. “Hi Edgar,” she said in that small voice of hers. “Would you be okay with some really quick filming today? Just some filler stuff, you won’t have to actually _do_ anything but talk, I promise!”

His eyes moved from Sam to Ashley, and while the illusion didn’t shatter entirely, some of the ice about him melted when he returned her smile. “Ah! Who would’ve guessed the reason for your visit would be flimflammery?”

“It’s what we’re best at!” Ashley giggled, beaming warmly up at him.

“Gonna need the upper floors too, if you’re so inclined…” Clearly distracted, Josh paged through the book, brow furrowed. “The haunted ones.”

“Mmm, of course you would want to go up there. Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you _do_ realize the reason those floors are restricted is due to structural degradation, correct? Not specters wailing in the night.” He stood from the desk and Sam was once again shocked by him—by his considerable height, by the solidity of his body despite his age.

Who _was_ this dude?!

Josh glanced up from the book. “Uh…well, then I guess it’s a good thing we got someone who can guide us _around_ the risky spots.”

“_If_ you don’t mind.” Though her voice was sweet enough, Sam could see the look Ashley shot Josh from the corner of her eye. “If you’re busy, don’t even worry about it…”

The rest of what she said was lost on Sam. Having turned so his back was to the desk (and consequently, the others), Chris waggled his eyebrows at her from over the frames of his glasses. “This will _shock_ you,” he said quietly, speaking in a tone that suggested it wouldn’t shock her in the slightest, “But Ash is uh, pretty much bffs with _every_ member of the library staff.”

“You don’t say.”

He nodded sagely. “It’s true! It’s true. Everyone except the grad students who work in the writing lab.” Conspiratorially, he lowered his voice even further, looking away from her to remove a handheld camera from his bag. “Between you and me? Don’t ask about it. Not unless you want a _real_ long lesson about the proper grammatical use of the word ‘wont.’”

“Duly noted, I guess.”

Both of them startled when Josh snapped his book shut. He slid it back into its spot on the shelf, seemingly having joined Ashley and Edgar’s conversation while Sam and Chris were having their own. “…after that,” he was saying, “Then you can just tell us the spots to avoid…”

“You misunderstand me. Warm-hearted creature though I am, I’m hardly fool enough to give you free reign of the area.”

“Oh come _on!_ We’ll behave! Won’t we? Tell him, Ash.”

She only seemed moderately irritated by then. Folding her arms across her chest, she watched Josh for a long moment…then looked to Chris…then to Edgar again, slowly and almost imperceptibly shaking her head.

Josh made the same kind of sound Sam, herself, made whenever the corner store ran out of granola bars. “Why are you such a narc?”

“I don’t want any of the books to—”

“You don’t want the books to get damaged, you don’t want Sam to get scared, tell me Ash, is there anything you _do_ want? Other than Cochise’s hot bod, that is.”

Chris sputtered and nearly dropped the camera he’d been messing with.

As an afterthought, Josh turned to the desk again. “Oh, by the way, this is Sam.” He waved a hand in her direction, gesturing to her like an enthusiastic game show hostess. “Sammy! This is Edgar! He’s our in to the haunted stacks, as well as our resident expert on the occult!” His grin turned positively _fond_ when he looked to him that time. “You wanna run through your _bona fides_ now, or during the interview?”

Edgar chuckled—mostly to himself—and set his elbows on the desk. “I would greatly appreciate it if you would stop telling people I’m an occultist.” He shifted that stormy gaze onto Sam, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes multiplying with a smile. It only _sort of_ eased her apprehension. “Hello Sam,” he said with a cordial, gentlemanly nod. “For the purposes of your edification and my own self-preservation, I feel the need to assure you that I am not an occultist.”

“Uh…” she managed. “Hi. I’m…not an occultist…either.”

Josh rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say you were an _occultist!_ I said you were an expert on the topic _of_ the occult.”

“The two are synonymous.”

“That’s the same thing!”

Yet again, she had to try not to laugh. Edgar and Ash had spoken at the exact same moment, jinxing each other perfectly. When she looked at him, Chris gave her an ‘I told you so’ sort of grin.

“We’re wasting precious filming time while you two sit there and pick apart my admittedly tenuous grasp of the English language.” Josh held his hands out in supplication, “So…may we proceed?”

Edgar seemed to consider them all for a long moment, then shrugged his shoulders and grabbed a string of keys from the desk (Sam was almost shocked to see most of them were cards…it seemed anachronistic, this old-timey person carrying around anything other than a ring of brass skeleton keys). “Onwards then, I suppose. Far be it from me to get in the way of your paranormal proclivities…”

They followed him away from the desk and towards a door at the far end of the floor, their footsteps echoing dismally in the open, empty space. The door was set off on either side by frosted glass panels, each so opaque that all she could tell about the room beyond was that the lights were off.

“Hey, so…” she whispered, tugging at the back of Josh’s hoodie to get his attention. “_Who_ is this guy?”

He waved her question off like an errant mosquito. “He’s a libraria—”

“_Curator_.” Edgar didn’t look up from unlocking the conference room door. “I am _not_ a librarian. I’m the _curator_ of the library. The two are entirely separate.”

“You can keep saying that all you want, man, but I’m still not buying it.”

The door unlocked with a heavy _thunk_. Sam had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from cawing out a nervous laugh when, in unison, Edgar and Ashley glanced over their shoulders to fix Josh with eerily identical expressions of exasperation. Then they turned to each other, shook their heads, and Edgar disappeared into the room, clicking the lights on as he went.

“They’re the same thing,” Josh muttered under his breath. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a fucking librarian.”

“And _how_ do you know him?”

“He’s married to my shrink.”

“I—” Sam paused. Her brow furrowed. She shook her head. “I don’t know what I expected, but it definitely…wasn’t that.” She raised her arms as if to say ‘Sure, why not?’ before letting them drop to her sides. “There’s no, like…”

“Conflict of interest?” He looked back to her with a knowing smile. “Nah. If anything, it’s a _confluence_ of interest. Both of ‘em are _suuuper_ into the whole grimdark, Lovecraftian, life-after-death dealio, so it’s kind of a match made in heaven.” Snickering, he shoved his bag onto Chris. “And as long as I don’t ask what Alan’s saying about me and my many, _many_ emotional complexes over dinner, then hey! We’re in the clear!”

Her eyebrows lifted substantially at that. “I want to say that makes sense. Really, Josh, I do, but it…” She didn’t want to think about what she must’ve looked when the realization hit her. “…wait. Wait!”

Chris tried to throw his arms up into the air, probably in some kind of touchdown gesture, but the weight of both bags was a little too much. It looked less ‘touchdown’ and more ‘jazz hands.’ “_There_ it is!”

Though she whirled towards Josh specifically, her eyes searched all three of their faces. “I-I’m sorry, _Edgar and Alan?!_”

There was no describing the pure, unfiltered joy in Ash’s eyes as she, grinning, asked, “It’s the _best_, right?” She was almost bouncing on her heels. “I keep telling him they need to get a raven and name it Lenore! I guess they’re a lot of work to keep as pets, though…but could you _imagine?!_”

“Edgar and Alan,” Sam repeated, fixing her stare on Josh. “You want me to believe…” Another thought occurred to her and she closed her eyes, covering her face with her hands. “Josh.”  
  
“Mhm?”

“Please…_please_ tell me their last name isn’t—”

“It’s Hill,” he said, cutting her off with a smirk. “Don’t you worry, Sammy, they’re not _that_ dramatic. Close! But not quite.” With a wistful sigh, he shook his head. “God, sometimes I wish they were my dads, y’know? Creepy shrink who collects terrifying paintings, creepy librarian who specializes in occult studies…_Hannibal_ meets _The Addams Family_…”

“Hey bro, quick question.”

“Yeah man?”

“How many weird, death-obsessed dads does one man need? Because by my count, you’ve already got one more than _any_ of us.”

By that point, Ashley had disappeared into the conference room; Sam joined her, albeit a bit cautiously, leaving the guys outside. The room was a huge extension of the rest of the floor: spooky, old-fashioned, and silent enough to make her ears ring with tinnitus. Edgar sat flipping lackadaisically through a few sheets of paper, his brow furrowed and lips pressed tightly together. Ash had set her bag down on the other end of the table, the sound making Sam doubt she’d brought her spirit board along. Huh. Well, maybe there wouldn’t be any communicating with the dead, tonight.

The thought of Ash’s earlier disapproval, though, of her odd hug with Chris, still weighed heavily on her mind. What was she in for, this time around?

“‘I am the curator—the curator of stories. Stories of love and hate, of—’ Oh come now.” His hand lowered, revealing his face to them once again. “Which of you wrote _this?_” Edgar looked suspiciously between Ashley (who shook her head emphatically) and Josh (who raised his eyebrows and smirked). “Ah. Yes. Not sure why I felt the need to ask. Has anyone ever suggested to you, Joshua, that perhaps toning down the melodrama would serve you well?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said plainly, inspecting the camera’s display monitor as Chris began setting everything up. “Your husband, actually.”

Edgar didn’t immediately reply except to chuckle. “Do you think you’ll ever _take_ that professional advice?”

“_Absolutely_ not. Don’t tell _him_ that, though. Gotta make him work for it.”

“Hey Sam?”

She turned to see Chris pointing a camera at her. How unexpected. “Could you sit in that chair? Pretty please? Sugar on top, blah blah blah…” He pointed at the seat directly across from Edgar, because of _course_ it would have to be that one.

Still, she did as she was asked, pulling the chair away from the table before primly sitting. “This good?”

After securing it to the tripod, he quickly glanced into the camera’s display monitor. He narrowed his eyes, then, with a curt wave of his hand, signaled her to shift. “Move just…yeah, there, that’s good. I think you’re…yup, you’re in frame. Okay, we’re set.”

She looked up at him, hoping to God she was controlling her face enough to _not_ appear like a deer in headlights. “Why do I need to be in frame?”

His smile went uncertain, then _very_ certain, then dropped altogether. “Oh goddammit—Josh! Why don’t—_ugh_. Fuck, he makes me so tired…” He offered her an apologetic grimace. “Surprise! …I guess. Welcome to your first interview.”

What?! Oh _hell_ no!

“Me?!” she hissed, rounding on him. “But I-I can’t! I haven’t practiced any questions, I don’t know what to ask! How can I—”

“Practice shmactice! Just let the spirit move you.” From behind her, two hands set themselves down onto her shoulders. “Rehearsal takes away the authenticity of the moment, Sammy. Makes it seem fake and stiff. Trust me, we’ve already got all the _stiff_ we need here with Eddie doin’ his Crypt Keeper shtick.”

He’d been scanning his script until then, but as Josh said it, Edgar lifted his mug in a polite little toast before bringing it to his mouth to take a drink. The finger he extended into the air was _not_ his pinky.

She’d come to expect help from Ash, and thankfully, this was no exception. A few stapled pieces of paper fluttered down in front of her with questions typed up in bold. “Not rehearsing is _also_ why we get no views,” she sighed, “And why _I_ have to spend so much time coming up with storylines after the fact.”

“And why _Chris_ spends so much time editing,” Chris added, speaking from the corner of his mouth.

“None of you appreciate this craft, I swear to Christ.” The weight of Josh’s hands disappeared from her shoulders. “You just ask a few questions, get a few ominous answers, and voilà! You got your big debut!”

Swallowing hard, she glanced down to the questions Ash had printed out, pursing her lips as she gathered her resolve. It took a minute or two…and then, inexplicably, it all melted away. In the blink of an eye, the creepy atmosphere lifted, the curtains parted, and she remembered where she was and what she was doing. Namely, she was a fucking Ghostbuster in the administrative block of the school’s library, preparing to ask some middle-aged Englishman whether he thought the campus was built over a portal to Hell.

Why the _fuck_ was she nervous?

A soft laugh escaped her—there was no fighting it. This was what she’d signed up for, baby! This was the job application she’d filled out!

She toggled her phone to silence the ringer, but kept it face-up on the table, just out of the camera’s view. She’d be able to see it if it went off, and knowing that helped quell her anxiety a bit more. In one resolute movement, Sam slid the questions onto her lap, folding her hands on the table in front of her. “I guess I’m ready if everyone else is.”

Edgar chuckled lowly, the sound at once pleasant and not, like stepping into a bath that was just a few degrees _too_ hot. “On with the show!”

True to Josh’s word, the interview was over pretty quickly. She stammered through a question or two and had to do a few takes to fix the issue, but that was it! Edgar, for his part, had been _born_ for this kind of dreck, delivering each of his answers with the grim timbre of an undertaker and the poise of an Elizabethan actor. He was unsettling enough for Josh, well spoken enough for Ash, and…well, okay, Sam didn’t really know _what_ he would’ve had to be to get Chris’s stamp of approval, but he definitely wasn’t _funny_, so there was that.

As soon as Chris had confirmed that was all they’d need for the interview portion, Josh clapped his hands and sprang back up from his seat. “_Sick!_ Now we can get to the good shit—” He paused, actually having the good sense to appear abashed. “Not that _that_ wasn’t good, Sammy. That’s not what I—”

Oho. Interesting!

She flicked her phone’s ringer back on, rolling her eyes as she pretended to be insulted. “Uh huh. It’s fine. I see how it is.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t take it personally, my dear. The mold-encrusted upper floors of this building have enticed much stronger men than our friend Joshua with their siren song.” Tapping his papers on the table until their edges were even, Edgar favored her with another knowing look—this one _much_ less intimidating. “As for myself, I think it more like than not has something to do with the myriad particles of carcinogens wafting down from the air ducts, but…I digress. I was, after all, only brought into this venture for my collection of keys, and _not_ for my opinions.”

“Damn right.” Josh seemed relieved to shift his focus back to him. “So I was hoping we could go right to the top. That way, regardless of how much noise we make, no one can bitch that we’re ‘disrupting’ them or anything.”

“Yeah, I’d _really_ prefer to _not_ piss off campus security this week, when they’re at their pissiest.” It was almost magical how swiftly Chris was able to disassemble their setup.

A sigh as Edgar stood from the table. “Am I to take _that_ conspicuous statement to mean you do, in fact, plan on making a ruckus?”

The guys both nodded fervently, pausing cleanup only long enough to high-five. “Ooh yeah…” Josh grinned. “We got plans.”

“Big plans,” Chris added.

“Huge! And if all goes according to plan…” he gave Chris a friendly smack on the back before leaning his weight against him. “It won’t be us two doing the screaming.”

Ashley heaved a weary sigh. She crossed the room to pat Sam’s shoulder in congratulations, though she kept her (unimpressed) stare on Josh and Chris. “I wish—I just friggin’ _wish_—you would maybe spend _two seconds_ thinking about what you want to say before you…” Her words slowed strangely.

Sam followed her gaze and immediately realized why.

Uh…oh.

That was going to be a problem.

She felt her eyes widen even as Ashley continued to speak. “…say…it…Hey, uh, Chris? Are you…feeling okay right now?”

Puzzled, he glanced at Josh, who did little more than shrug. “Uh…I’m fine? Why?”

But then _Josh_ realized what they were looking at. And that’s when the cursing began. “Mother_fuck!_ I—_shit!_ God_damn_ it! Cochise, shit!”

Sam watched the dark stain spread across the shoulder of Chris’s hoodie. If it hadn’t been leaking onto Josh’s hand, she might’ve thought it was only water; since the sweatshirt was black, all she could see was a dark patch of wetness growing larger and larger…but as it began seeping onto Josh’s hand and down his wrist, she could see it for what it really was.

Blood.

“Are you—” She’d barely been able to get that much out when Josh started yelling again.

“_Fuck_, man!”

“Did y—oh come on, Josh! Why’d you have to hit me like that?! You _knew_ I was wearing this stupid thing!”

“It wasn’t that hard! I barely tapped you!”

All at once, she remembered Josh’s mysterious nosebleed at the house…and then the diner. “Please tell me that’s fake blood.” Her voice came out _significantly_ flatter than she’d intended it to.

“Yup,” Ashley sighed, resting her hands against the table. Her eyes moved back and forth as she watched the guys trip over themselves to try and salvage the blood pack (or _packs_) Chris had hidden under his clothes.

“Corn syrup?” Edgar asked, his attention _also_ riveted by the slapstick performance going on in front of him.

“And food coloring.”

At that, he clucked his tongue in a decidedly parental way. “Will you two _please_ take this somewhere else? If you stain this carpeting, I will personally see to it that this office gains two _new_ hauntings. Now, be considerate and take this to…oh I don’t know, the lavatories. Or somewhere else where a bloodstain might be seen as more thematically appropriate.” After heaving a long-suffering sigh, he added, “I certainly hope you ladies have a backup plan for the evening’s entertainment.”

“I certainly hope so too,” Ashley mumbled, dropping herself into one of the chairs. She seemed to know they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The three continued to watch them struggle…and then Sam’s head lolled back onto her shoulders. She was struck with the terrible, mortifying, _hilarious_ realization that they were going to have to walk _out_ of the library. In front of everyone. With Chris and Josh _covered_ in fake blood.

So much for not getting campus security involved.


	7. I ain't afraid of no ghost! (...except that one.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has quite the scare.

“So you don’t like ghosts.”

Oh, _this _would be good. Sam looked up from her laptop, interest piqued by the nonchalance of Chris’s tone. “Is this a pickup line you’re trying? It’s not great, gotta be honest.”

“Heyheyhey, wow, hang on a hot second, who gave you the right to crack jokes? _I’m _the funnyman of this group. You better watch yourself.” He swiveled around in his chair, using one foot to keep turning himself side to side. “Back to the topic at hand! Is there a _reason_ for the ghost thing? I mean…no one just hates something for no reason…no one is _scared_ of something for no reason…”

She rolled her eyes, “I’m pretty sure most people don’t like the idea of ghosts. They’re scary. That’s the _point_.”

“Well yeah, sure, but…” He held his hands up uncertainly, half-shrugging in her direction, “Is it that you’re superstitious? Are you one of those people who thinks, like, they had a spooky encounter with a ‘_tormented spirit_’ in their old attic? Did…” Lowering both his voice and face, he looked at her over the frames of his glasses, assuming a mockingly grave expression. “Did you watch _Paranormal Activity_ at a particularly sensitive age?”

Ashley answered _for_ her, walking past and flicking his glasses askew. “Don’t be a _jerk!_ She doesn’t know you well enough to know when you’re joking yet!”

“Hey! Who’s joking?” Chris pretended to be affronted as he gasped, “I’m simply _asking_ Sam about her stupid, childish, made-up, rid—_hey!_” In a flash, Ashley had plucked his glasses off, quickly angling her body away from him; he scrambled to get them back, but between her speed and his apparent near-sightedness, the attempt was a pathetic one. “Unnecessary! This is child abuse!”

“You’re literally two years older than me.”

“Well _physically_, yeah, but _mentally?_”

“Was…was that a self-burn?”

Their play fighting was cute in an awkward sort of way…though admittedly, _everything_ they did was fairly awkward. Chris and Ashley, as a unit, were like the runts of the litter, the ones who never _really_ grew to fit comfortably into their bodies. They were a strange juxtaposition to Josh in that way, their dorkiness uncut and uncensored, not tempered by the sort of laid-back self-confidence he seemed to have in spades. It was funny, Sam thought, the sorts of people who ended up as friends.

She laughed, pushing her laptop aside in time to see Chris wrestle his glasses out of Ashley’s grip. “Not a _great_ story behind it.” Sam pulled her legs up onto the chair in an attempt to seem more at ease than she actually was. It wasn’t a topic she liked to dwell on, mostly because she knew the effect it had on people. But…well shit, it was bound to come up eventually.

Why not just…get it over with?

Her shoulders rose and fell in a casual shrug, “I lost a couple of friends a little while back. In an accident. The whole ghost thing kinda…hits a different nerve after that, I guess.” Absently, she tapped at her phone, but her lock screen didn’t show any new notifications. She let it go dark again before looking up.

As predicted, they had gone rigid, their earlier joking having flown out the window as they openly grimaced at one another, both of them _wildly _trying to find something—anything—to look at that wasn’t Sam, herself.

“Oh,” Chris said dully. “…that’ll do it.”

Ashley smacked his shoulder with a bit too much force to be playful. She lowered her voice to a whisper, but even then, they were close enough that Sam could still make out her, “_This_ is why we don’t ask stupid questions!” She looked to her apologetically, the corners of her mouth tucking inward. “I’m sorry, Sam…that’s awful, I had no idea—”

“Yeahhh…” Almost flippantly, she waved it off. The shape of her smile was familiar in its exhaustion; she wondered if it was something that would _ever_ get easier to talk about. She doubted it. “It’s fine! For real, like I said, it was a while ago.” She didn’t mention how much it had influenced her decision to transfer schools, to pick up and move, to get away from _everything. _If she followed that particular line of thought, eventually she’d get to the part where she’d have to admit it was what had brought her _here_, to their strange cohort. “Turns out you just kinda lose your taste for paranormal stuff after something like that. It…I dunno, raises too many questions or something.”

They exchanged a look that she couldn’t read but instinctively knew she didn’t like.

Uh oh.

Chris released a long breath as he adjusted his glasses. “Uh…you didn’t hear this from me, okay—”

“Or me!” Ashley piped in.

“—but you might not…want to bring that up…with Josh.”

She tried not to roll her eyes at the suggestion. Maybe she hadn’t known him for _that_ long, but a psych major was a psych major, and if there was _one thing_ you didn’t do around _those people_, it was mention any sort of personal trauma. “What, think he might wanna psychoanalyze me? Get to the root of my inner struggles?” Sam laughed and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, letting her eyes stray back down to the essay she’d been pecking away at. “He can _try_. I’m a pretty tough nut to crack.”

“Mmm…”

Double uh oh.

“It’s, uh…” When she glanced up, she caught the very tail end of another significant look passing between the two of them. “Let’s just say that Josh is…very _into_ ghosts for the same reason you are _not_.” Chris _did_ meet her eyes then, his discomfort plain as the nose on his face. “But you really, _really_ didn’t hear that from me. Us. You didn’t hear that from _us_.”

Well the plot just kept thickening, didn’t it? Her eyes flicked from Chris to Ashley, searching for any hint that this was just another stupid joke she hadn’t been let in on yet. It really didn’t seem that way, though, so she shrugged and nodded. “You got it. Don’t ask about tragic backstories, check. Anything else I should avoid while I’m at it?”

“Now that you mention it…” The change in Chris’s tone told her immediately that the subject had been dropped; she already knew _that_ cadence, and unless she was super wrong (which she doubted), there’d be a crappy joke in three…two…one…

“I thought you were _working_ on something?”

Ah, an Ashley interruption. She hadn’t anticipated that. Shoot. The look on Chris’s face sure suggested she’d taken the wind out of his sails, and that was pretty much the same thing as being proven right, wasn’t it? Sure it was. She snickered and stretched out, shifting herself until she was sitting cross-legged in the chair, elbows resting on her knees. “Yeah, _Chris_,” she teased, “I was promised a final product today. Gonna be pretty bummed if I walked all the way over here in the cold for nothing.”

He threw his hands up in a gesture of impatience, pivoting himself with his foot such that he spun back to face his computer setup. “Thankless. You’re both _thankless_.” There was a brief moment where all they could hear was some deliberate clicking, a few keystrokes, and then he ushered them over with a curt finger-wave. “It’s not the _whole thing_, I still need a littttle more time for that—”

“What have you been _doing _all day?” Ashley’s tone was too light for Sam to believe she was _actually_ disappointed. “I have class soon! I’m gonna have to stop back at my dorm and get all my stuff in like…fifteen minutes, and you said it would be done by then!” She whined, but again, Sam didn’t buy it for a second.

Before Chris could say whatever it was he had planned on, Sam joined them at the computer, meeting Ashley’s eyes. “Hang on, you don’t live here?”

“Me? Oh gosh no.” Her eyes widened with something like mortification. “You think I’d be able to live in a place this messy? Puh-_lease_.”

“You’re literally here _every time_ I stop by,” Sam said, feeling her eyebrows begin to creep upwards. She had to make a very concerted effort to keep from glancing down at Chris—she suspected she knew _why_ Ash was always there, of course, and she _sincerely_ doubted it had anything to do with ghost hunting.

“You can say that again.”

“Oh shush.” She directed her voice back at Sam, “My roomie always has people over. It’s annoying. _Way_ quieter here. Well…unless these dum-dums are doing something stupid. Besides, I’m sure this’ll _totally_ shock you, but neither of them really knows how to actually _cook_, so…they kinda _need_ me.”

Turning away from the monitors, Chris cocked his head to the side in an obvious pantomime of insult. “I can cook! Can’t say the same for Josh, but—”

“Scrambled eggs isn’t _cooking_, Chris.”

“Uh, pretty sure it _is_, Ash. By _definition_. You’re introducing a foodstuff to heat. Ergo, cooking.” He turned to Sam with a gesture that clearly told her she was meant to agree with him.

“I mean…” she said slowly, frowning as she did so. “I guess…_technically_ it is?”

“Ha! See? Sam’s on my side.”

“Oh please.”

This was the kind of shit she could watch for _days_. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that kind of time. “What were you gonna show us?” she asked, bringing an immediate and abrupt end to their back-and-forth. The main window of his editing software just showed a black rectangle, giving absolutely zero clue as to what bizarre, nonsensical scene she was about to witness.

He didn’t answer her right away, instead taking a moment to childishly stick his tongue out at Ash (an insult that she _returned_, Sam noticed). _Then_ he brandished the screen, sitting up a bit straighter, putting on an air of feigned pride as he announced, “The new opening sequence!”

Ashley groaned and all but melted against the desk. Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling in an obvious show of agony. “_Nooo_…”

“It’s _way_ better than the old one!”

“Ghost show openings are the worst! Just the absolute pits! There’s no way it’s good, Chris.”

“I didn’t say it was _good_, Ash. I _said_ it was better than the old one. Jeez, it’s like you don’t listen to me, or something.” He reached over and nudged her side until she squirmed back to attention. “How about you can it and save all your complaints for the Q&A afterwards?”

She didn’t say as much, but uh…Sam had to agree with Ashley. There were few things on Earth that were as consistently cringe-worthy as the opening credits of a ghost hunting show. They were just kind of universally horrible in that special, edgy way that was usually reserved for things like fifteen-year-olds’ _Twilight_ fanfiction or teenage boys who shopped _solely_ at the mall’s Spencer’s outlet. She grit her teeth and prepared for the worst.

And she was not disappointed.

It was rough.

Oh it was rough.

‘Rough,’ actually, was a pretty kind way of putting it. There were so many shots of rusty old fences, unnecessary time lapses of dark clouds moving across the sky, and of course—of _course_—a frankly irresponsible use of the night-vision camera, casting their faces in eerie green glows, their eyes bright beacons in whatever dark room they’d been in at the time. God Almighty, there was nothing _spooky_ about those shots, they just…they just sort of looked like raccoons caught on trail cams, to be honest.

She had to laugh when each of their title cards came up, pausing and zooming in on a still shot of them one by one, a brief one-liner of their own voice-over accompanying their name and role on the team.

“_There’s someone here_,” said a dramatic whisper as the camera froze on a night-vision shot of Ashley looking off into the distance. Below her, in a font that had to be (what else) Chiller: **ASHLEY BROWN – INTUITIVE**. Awful. But _hilarious_.

“_If we can help, then that’s what we’re going to do_.” Aw shit. That was _her_ voice. Sam winced preemptively when she recognized the line from the shooting they’d done after interviewing Edgar in the library, but the close-up of her that followed really wasn’t that bad! It had been from the first night, when she’d gone to the townhouse in her peacoat while the rest of them wore hoodies, and obviously had come before her freakout during the séance. **SAM GIDDINGS – INVESTIGATOR**, read _her_ description. Not _too_ bad.

“_Believe it when I see it_.” The screen froze on Chris balancing one of the cameras on his shoulder while pulling an impatient face. Sam laughed again, something about the sudden shift in tone sending her careening into a giggle fit. **CHRIS HARTLEY – SKEPTIC**, his title card said…right before a crude animation crossed the second word out, replacing it with a new one: **CHRIS HARTLEY – <strike>SKEPTIC</strike> CAMERAMAN**.

“_If there’s something here, show yourself!_” Josh’s close-up was _also_ done in night-vision, giving his eyes that awful, deep-forest glint that Ash’s had. While she had been looking off into space in hers, though, _he_ was barreling straight into the camera, adding an extra _oomph_ to the creep factor.

Grinning, Sam opened her mouth to congratulate Chris on making something so perfectly terrible, but…the words died in her throat when Josh’s description flashed on-screen.

**JOSH WASHINGTON – INVESTIGATOR**.

Just like that, she felt as though the floor might swallow her whole, pulling her down and chewing her up, spitting out nothing but her bones. She stared at the screen until the next shot began to fade in, a B-roll clip of the library set against grey clouds, glowing with the menacing promise of snow.

Ashley was saying something, she thought, the comment followed by the lower buzz of Chris’s voice, but her brain had gone to radio static, turning it into little more than background noise.

Since she’d been the one to email her in the very beginning, she’d known Ash’s full name, sure. The guys had put themselves into her phone contacts by first name only, and it had just…never occurred to her to ask. That was the kind of stuff that came _eventually_, it wasn’t a topic of discussion. You didn’t sit around with your friends comparing last names and eating pizza—at least not in any of the friend groups _she’d_ ever been in.

But now…

Now she was regretting that.

It had to be a coincidence, right? It _had_ to be. Lots of people had that name. Lots and lots. This was America, after all, and there had to be hundreds, if not _millions_ of Washingtons in every corner of the country, and—

“…?”

She shook herself out in time to see them both staring expectantly.

“Oh, sorry, definitely…” What? “Zoned out for a second there.” Her smile felt tight, artificial, though neither Chris nor Ash showed any sign of noticing. “That was…definitely something,” she joked. “Better than the old one?”

Ashley seesawed her hand in the air, laughing when Chris pushed himself away from the desk with enough force to roll back towards the table Sam had been sitting at earlier.

“No respect! I swear, I get no respect around here!”

Once he was out of earshot, and _only_ once he was out of earshot, Ashley leaned over closer to her. “Way better. Don’t let him know that, though. Last thing we need is for _both_ of them to be total megalomaniacs.” Laughing, she stood back up, looking around the room before spotting her bag and hustling over to it. “I should probably head out,” she sighed, checking the time on her phone, “Are you heading back to campus, Sam? We could walk together.”

That was the question, wasn’t it? This essay wasn’t going to write itself, and obviously she’d get more work done if she holed herself up (alone) in her dorm room, but…

“Nah, I’m gonna stick around here for a little longer, I think. Peer pressure Chris into finishing so I can see my big debut interview before the rest of the internet gets to.” It wasn’t _totally_ a fib. Just mostly.

“You comin’ back for dinner?” Chris asked, glancing over his shoulder. “I could make eggs,” he added in a singsong.

Instead of answering, Ashley stuck her tongue out at him again, slinging her bag onto her shoulder before hurrying out of the apartment. The door closed behind her with a click, and the sound of her footsteps disappeared into the hallway a moment later.

“Ah well. All in a day’s work.” The chair gave a strained squeak as Chris stood. He jerked his finger towards the kitchen, “You want anything to drink?”

“I’m good.”

“Suit yourself!”

She took her earlier seat, checking her phone before waking her laptop up. No notifications, no important emails, nothing except her essay to distract her from the nasty thing gnawing its way through the lining of her stomach. Other than the quiet clinking of Chris rummaging through the fridge, the apartment felt almost oppressively silent. It was the kind of silence she hated the most—the tense, creeping sort that always, always, _always_ preceded a cheap jump-scare in a movie.

So she broke it before it could break her. “Hey, so, weird question.”

“Yeah-huh?” He reemerged from the kitchen with a drink, popping its tab before leaning against the open doorway. “If it’s about the quote I used, no, I do not accept constructive criticism.”

Again, her smile felt plastic. None of this was her business, and she knew she was going to feel like a stupid kid when it turned out her imagination was running wild; the coincidence of it all, though, was threatening to drive her up the wall. “Earlier when you said I shouldn’t bring up the…” she gestured vaguely, “Not liking…ghosts…thing…with Josh, did you mean that like…I shouldn’t do that because _he_ had…” This felt like a minefield. A minefield of her own making. “_People_…die? Or…?”

Chris’s posture had changed in a way she’d only seen it do once or twice before. It was always strange to see the class clown acting seriously. He paused mid-drink, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. The expression was easy enough to read, really. He was weighing pros and cons, trying to decide how much was too much to tell her, or whether he was going to tell her anything at all. “It’s…not really my story to tell.” His shoulders popped up in a _very_ defensive shrug.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean—sorry. Nosey.” She shot him another tight-lipped smile, hoping it didn’t look like a wince half as much as it _felt_ like one. “It’s none of my business, obviously—”

“It’s no big, just don’t mention it to Josh and we’ll be a-oka—”

“Don’t mention _what_ to me?”

Sam nearly jumped out of her fucking chair.

The front door clicked closed again, punctuated by the sound of Josh toeing out of his boots. “Secrets, secrets are no fun, kids…”

Then, in the same strangely practiced way so many their odd behaviors had, Chris spoke up in a voice that was unbelievably calm. “Sam’s never played Bloody Mary. Aw shit. Whoops. Me and my big mouth.” The lie came so easily to him, so smoothly, that she had to stop and wonder whether this was a backup plan he just _always _had in his pocket. That was an interesting thought. Not a _good _one, obviously, but…interesting. He shot her a look that, though brief, warned her to stick to that version of the story, no matter how little she liked it.

And oh, she did _not_ like it.

“You’ve never _what?!_” Josh emerged from the hall, fixing her with a look that seemed to suggest Chris had told him she had done something unthinkable—_unforgivable_—like cannibalizing a loved one.

She found herself searching his face for something familiar. Anything. Not the jawline. Not the nose. Not his height, not his mouth, not _anything_. Except for maybe the shape of his eyes. Even then she wasn’t sure, but they weren’t _so_ dissimilar that she could write it off as her imagination. Had she been missing something? Had she just overlooked—

“_Never?!” _He sank down into the cushions of the couch as he stared. “Sam. Please. You get what we _do_ here, right? You get that it’s like…a ghost thing, yeah? This is understood? And you’re going to come into _my_ home, sit on _my_ furniture, partake of _my_ snack foods, and then look me in the eye and tell me you’ve never done the _one_ ghost-based thing every child in the goddamn world has done by the time they’re six? This is what you’re going to do?”

The unease in her gut was beginning to abate, though not nearly as quickly as she would’ve liked; she leaned her elbow against the table and gave Josh another thorough look-over to try and silence the last of her doubts. It mostly worked! Mostly. “If you had to guess, how much caffeine would you say you downed right before walking through that door?”

He turned to Chris with his face contorted in a mask of disbelief. “You’re hearing this?”

“Leave me out of this one. I’ve paid my dues!” Chris sidled past them to get back to his desk. “I’ve Bloody Mary’ed, I’ve Light As a Feather’ed, I’ve Charlie Charlie’d, I’ve done it all, baby, and I’m just—aw geez—I’m just _way_ too busy to deal with…” He sat in front of the monitors, wiggling his fingers in their general direction before setting his drink down and grabbing for his headphones, “…this...”

Helpful. Super helpful.

“How do you expect to be taken seriously in paranormal circles if you haven’t even done the basics?”

“I, um, don’t? Yeah, I don’t. Honestly, I’m sort of hoping the paranormal circles _won’t_ take me seriously.”

Had a stranger, any stranger at all—a neighbor, a delivery person, the complex’s super, Santa Claus, whoever the fuck Conrad was—walked into the room just then, they might’ve thought Josh was dying. Between the agonized look on his face and the ghastly wail he let out, it was…well, it was a pretty fair guess.

“_Sam!_” He raked his hands down his face, fingers momentarily carving deep grooves through his cheeks before he threw his arms out to his sides. “Did you live under a rock your whole life?! How do—who doesn—answer me this: Have you _ever_ been to a single slumber party?!”

“Uh, yes?” She watched him flop bonelessly onto his back. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“And at this slumber party…” Josh continued, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, hands flailing in mad gestures as he spoke. “No one—not even _once_—raised the possibility of playing Bloody Mary?!”

She snickered a quiet laugh, closing her laptop. There’d be no work done here, she realized; it had been a valiant effort, but mmm…a futile one, too. “Okay, now I need to ask _you_ a question: What slumber parties have _you_ gone to where people are trying to make ghosts angry?”

His head lolled on the cushions until he was looking at her again. “_All_. All slumber parties. Because _I_, Samantha, did not live a sheltered life.”

Over at the desk, Chris raised a finger and cleared his throat. Was he…was he still listening?! That jerk had his headphones on! How often was he pulling _that _shit on them? “To be fair, dude? I don’t think the sleepovers at _your_ house count, since _your_ house is full of horror movie props. And gallons of fake blood. And like…literal fucking death masks from old celebrities.”

Sam gagged. Josh rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. Well hey, look, no time like the present, right?” That wolfish grin of his slid across his face like hungry ivy, and in one move, he rolled off the couch to join her on the floor. “Whaddya say? Let’s give Mary a quick little ring, you and me.”

“Pass.”

“Sammy.”

“_Hard_ pass.”

“What kind of ghost hunter shies away from a kid’s game?” He scoffed dramatically. “You realize you’ve already witnessed a séance, survived the ghostly interference that followed, ventured into the dark and haunted corridors or the library, seen a spirit attack our sweet friend Christopher—” if he noticed Chris flip him the bird, he showed no sign, still ticking item after item off on his own fingers, “—and, most impressively, you braved being alone with Edgar and Ash for ten minutes without jumping out of a window.”

No part of her wanted to encourage him, but there was no way to keep from smiling when his grin was so fucking infectious. The longer he talked (the longer she _watched _him talk), the more ridiculous her earlier panic felt. It had been a coincidence, that was all…there was no way it hadn’t been. “Still doesn’t mean I want to test my luck with a vengeful murder-ghost.”

“Oooh, oh! Okay. Okay, girl, I think I got you.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Josh leaned back to take her in, cocking his head to the side, tapping his chin, the whole shebang. “You’re scared.”

Oh please.

She shook her eyes and reached out to lightly pop him on the shoulder. “Well _duh_ I’m scared, you putz! Have you not been paying attention even a little? I’m scared of ghosts! That’s my whole thing!”

Though there was no chance it had actually hurt, Josh momentarily grimaced, rubbing at the spot she’d ‘punched’ as if it was sore. He went sulkily quiet. _That_ was when she realized there was no getting out of whatever was about to go down. “Sooo…”

Yup, here it came, chugging around the bend.

“Have you ever heard of ‘exposure therapy?’”

Sam let out a low, dull teakettle groan. She made a mental note to thank Chris for this later. “Isn’t that what they do on Maury? Like, making people who are scared of spiders _touch_ them?” There was no sign of her wince chipping away at Josh’s resolve—if anything, it only seemed to bolster his excitement. “You’re gonna make me play this stupid game.” Not a question. A statement of fact. Trying to fight it would be futile.

“I mean…sure sounds like a good way to get you over your fear, doesn’t it?” He was already on his feet, holding his hand out to her like this was a masquerade ball and he was some suave suitor asking for a dance.

But he was not. He was none of those things. He was a ghost-hunting psych major who wanted to throw around terms like ‘exposure therapy’ and ‘placebo effect’ while also scaring the holy bejeezus out of her. “I want to make it abundantly clear that I’m _already_ regretting this.” Sam stood from her chair, still pointedly skirting around his offered hand, shaking her head in resignation. “Lead the way…”

If his grin got any wider, the top of his head would’ve fallen clean off. Josh jostled the back of Chris’s chair, “‘Ey, Cochise! You down, man?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Pussy.”

“You know it.” And with that, he readjusted his headphones, hunched himself over his keyboard, and went back to work patching together what footage they’d been able to get after the blood pack incident.

He rolled his eyes in Sam’s direction. “It’s _impossible_ to find good help these days. Ah well. Shall we?”

It was only then that she realized…in all the times she’d visited the apartment, she’d never checked out the back. Through some sort of miracle (or some form of social anxiety), she’d never asked where the bathroom was. She’d never been given a tour. She’d just accepted that outside of the relative familiarity of the living room-slash-kitchenette area, there were bedrooms.

She was led into one of said bedrooms with a grand sweeping bow and a wave; judging by the sheer number of horror movie posters on the walls, it was easy enough to assume it was Josh’s. A shelf against the wall was positively overflowing with DVD and Blu-ray cases, the desk covered in crumpled-up wads of notebook paper and _gargantuan_ textbooks that came very close to triggering her fight-or-flight response.

“Aaand…here we are.” He pulled open a door on the right wall, the wedge of light from his bedroom cutting through the dark of room beyond to reveal a tiled floor.

“Joyous day.” Sam stepped into the bathroom and reached for where she assumed a light switch would be…and Josh lazily pushed her hand away.

“What’s the point in that, Sammy?” he laughed, nudging her until they were both situated in front of the sink.

The sink and the giant mirror on the wall above it.

She met her own eyes in the mirror, feeling herself gulp down a mouthful of childish apprehension. Mirror-Sam was smiling tightly, while a full above her, mirror-Josh grinned with Christmas-morning glee. Scanning the bathroom in the reflection before he could pull the door shut, she quickly took in the dim shapes around her: a shower with the curtain half-pulled, a pile of crumpled towels on the floor, an impossible number of cleaning products wedged between the toilet and the wall, a glass with—

Darkness.

Now Sam wasn’t the sort to be afraid of the dark; she wasn’t even the kind who followed that statement with something cheesy, like ‘It’s what’s _in_ the dark that scares me…’ Nope. Not a tiny bit. Since childhood, she’d loved nothing more than camping far, far from the artificial glow of the city, walking around where the dark got so thick you could slice through it with a hunting knife. Hell, she’d gone spelunking with her dad a couple years back, and there was no comparing the darkness of an apartment bathrooms to the _oppressive_ darkness of an underground cave…

But fuck, man, the mirror thing? That was creepy. Who wasn’t weirded out by mirrors?!

It took every iota of her self-restraint to keep from gasping when Josh nudged her with his shoulder. “You remember the rules?”

“It’s not really a _rule_. You just say the name, right?”

“Three times.”

“Three times, yeah.”

“Then you stare into the mirror for another few seconds—”

“How are we supposed to see _anything_ when the lights are off?”

“—and then we turn on the lights and see if she swoops in to kill us both where we stand.” He chuckled, the sound sending a (not entirely unpleasant) shiver up from the base of her spine. “Pretty basic shit.”

Sam frowned into the space where she knew her reflection was. “Gonna go on the record as saying I hate this, and I’m going to be _so_ mad if Chris starts banging on the door.” She steeled herself and set her shoulders. “If he does that just to scare me, mark my words, Josh…I will _kill_ him.”

“There’s the spirit!” Though she couldn’t see him, she could feel Josh moving beside her, could hear him rubbing his hands together in excitement. “Care to do the honors? Y’know, take the reins on conquering this fear of yours?”

“Suuure,” she groaned, leaning forward until she felt the cool lip of the sink under her fingers. “Uh…okay. So. Bloody Mary.”

Nothing happened. The bathroom was eerily silent around them.

“Bloody Mary.”

Something in the air shifted. Maybe it was Josh—_probably_ it was Josh—but she couldn’t be sure. A chill crept from one side of her face to the other, setting the fine hairs on her neck on end. Was that a draft? Had the heating kicked on in the other room? She strained her ears and thought she heard…_something_, but it was too faint, and gone as soon as she registered it. Sam turned and looked around the darkened bathroom, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling embarrassingly on edge.

She swallowed hard, trying (and failing) to convince herself that it was all in her head. The guys had, per the usual, managed to get under her skin with their stupid little games, nothing more, nothing less. It was her stupid fear giving her goosebumps…nothing else.

Sam took one last deep breath. “Bloody Mary.”

…nothing.

A few more seconds passed uneventfully, and then Josh flicked the lights on. The sudden light caused her to let out an embarrassing yelp as she covered her eyes. “You couldn’t _warn_ me?”

“Look at that! You survived!” He jokingly clapped her once on the back, waiting until she dropped her hands again to proudly meet her eyes in the mirror. “See? No demons, no ghosties _or_ ghoulies, and nothing jumped out to kill you!” The hand that wasn’t on her back flew to his own chest with a quiet _thump_. “I’m so glad I could be here with you for this watershed moment, Sammy. I’m so glad I could facilitate this kind of healing for you.”

“Yeah. You’re a real prince, you know th—”

And that was when the shower curtain was jerked open all the way and Chris jumped out of the shower, yelling on top of his fucking lungs.

Logic didn’t factor into what happened next. All Sam knew was one second she was seeing movement in the mirror, and then she’d spun around, acting on survival instinct alone, and _shoved_ him back as hard as she could. Which seemed to be harder than he had anticipated, because he had to frantically scramble to catch himself before he tumbled back into the tub.

“_Shit!_”

“Why would you _do_ that?!” Under her hands, her heart felt like it was pounding hard enough to crack her ribs. “I—” But the guys were guffawing even as she fumed, filling the small space with their laughter. They reached over her head to high-five. “Were you _in on this?!_” She jabbed an accusatory finger into Josh’s chest, making him laugh harder. That was an answer in itself. “Oh my _God!_ Oh my God.”

Chris shot her a sheepish grin in the mirror. “To be fair, I was like…pretty sure you’d caught on.” He pitched his voice up into a register that sounded nothing like her (or any other woman in existence), “‘I’m gonna be _so_ mad if Chris starts banging on the door…’ Put the fear of God into me!”

“Har-de-har. Remember the part that came after that?”  
  
“Which part would that be?”

“The part where I said I would frickin’ _kill you!_” But the initial jolt of fear had faded by then, replaced by the thrumming buzz of leftover adrenaline, and…fuck, she was laughing, too. “I hate you,” she said to both of them, “I just hate you so, so much.” Sam took a deep, steadying breath, then looked from one to the other. “How’d you do that? _How_ did you get in there before us?”

“Eh—hang on there, Sammy! A true artist never reveals their se—”

It had been hidden by a hanging towel and the cover of darkness when they’d first walked in, but as Chris walked over to the other side of the bathroom, Sam suddenly noticed what she’d missed earlier: the outline of another door. Sans decorum, he flung it open, giving her a glimpse of a second bedroom. “Ta daaa! Real cushy digs, I know, I know, but you gotta admit, when it comes to scaring guests, sometimes having a shared bathroom is actually ideal!” He looked so proud of himself. So damn proud.

She thought she had an idea about how to fix that.

“Oh!” It took all of her self-restraint to keep from laughing at her _own_ plans. Keeping her voice as innocent and bright as she was able, Sam asked, “I came in through Josh’s bedroom, I’m assuming…so that means that other one is yours and Ash’s, then?” Pretending to only be half-interested, she blinked up at him, smiling sweetly. She became significantly _more_ interested when Chris seized up like the human embodiment of a bad cramp.

Now, of course, Sam couldn’t be _sure_, but she suspected maybe—just _maybe_—she’d said the magic phrase. The look he gave her was positively beyond words. “Uh…” For all intents and purposes, he’d taken on the general air of a computer trying to process an impossible request, exhaust fans running full tilt. So much for his earlier delight. “Ash doesn’t…live here…”

“Yeah I _know_, but she said she stays over all the time. Sorry, geez, just sort of figured she’d stay with you when she did.” Oh, this was worth money.

When she turned to the mirror again, she could see Chris frantically looking from her to Josh…then down to the floor, a dark flush quickly creeping up his neck. “Why…would you think that?”

“Uh,” not laughing was getting harder and harder. She busied herself with straightening out her sweater and smoothing down her hair, acting as though she was really only looking at her own reflection. “Cuz you guys are dating?”

“I—you d—_we’re not! _We don—”

“You’re _not?_” Sam asked. She formed her mouth into a tiny ‘o’ of surprise, turning to Chris. “Oh man, I’m sorry! Wow! That’s so weird!” Then, the pièce de résistance, she frowned, looking to Josh instead. “Why did you tell me they were?”

There was a beat where Josh didn’t seem to understand what she’d said…and then realization dawned. She watched with her own sort of sneaky glee when, piece by piece, the look of snide amusement dropped from his face. “Oh. You little—” he started, but then Chris was on him, sputtering an angry string of words she only half-heard (“_Dude, what the fuck?! Why would you—fuck off!”_) as she sauntered her way out of the bathroom and out of Josh’s room.

Too easy. Just way too easy.

It’s what they _deserved_ for spooking her like that. Jerks.

She sat down in front of her laptop again, opening it with a casual flick of her wrist. There was her essay, right where she left it! She doubted she’d be able to _write_ anything, but she could sure _pretend_ to be writing when the guys inevitably burst their way out of the bathroom. Sam dropped her chin into her hand, laughing off the remaining adrenaline swirling around in her chest.

If nothing else, her brush with Bloody Mary had done _one_ good thing…By the time the guys came back out into the living room, arguing loudly, Josh’s last name was the farthest thing from her mind.


	8. Seeing things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam isn't get paid nearly enough for this shit. Or at all, for that matter.

“Not to be too forward or anything, but are you…Sammy, you feelin’ this?”

Hoo boy. Smooth as silk. She rolled her eyes at Josh, looking up at him dully. “What is it that I’m supposed to be feeling, exactly?”

There was no embarrassment, no _shame_, in his expression as he met her flat stare. Honestly, she was coming to wonder whether he was immune to that shit altogether—it always seemed to roll off of him like water from a duck.

Fucking psych majors.

“_This_,” he reiterated, one hand gesturing back and forth between the two of them. “This _scorching_ sexual tension we’ve been trying to ignore for the past month or so.”

“Oh, is _that_ what that is?” Sam tsk’ed softly and shook her head. “Well that’s a relief. All this time, I’d been thinking maybe it was the beginning of food poisoning.”

And _still_, no shame! No, at that, Josh actually _laughed_. Oh, he was _really _turning out to be trouble. Capital-T Trouble.

“She does _jokes_, too! Be still my heart.” He clapped a hand over his chest for emphasis. “Has anyone ever suggested to you, Samantha, that you may very well be the whole package?”

“Just in general? Or in terms of a ghost hunting cohost?” She felt her lips quirk upward, and aw shit. Aw damn. Crap. She was falling for it. She _felt herself_ falling for it.

“Let’s say the former.”

“Oh, then _all_ the time.”

“Modest, too! A truly modern woman in all respects. How about the latter?”

“Mhm.”

_That_ seemed to give him pause…but even so, his grin never flickered. “Wha—wait, _who?_”

Pretending to check her phone, Sam shrugged noncommittally. “_You_, for one. Just now, actually.”

“Keep pulling shit like that, and I’m gonna fall in love with you,” he warned, assuming a jokingly grave expression. “And consider that for a sec, okay? ‘Ghosts’ isn’t a _great_ answer to give people when they ask you the big ‘So how did you two meet’ question at dinner parties.” He bent down to the cooler, rummaging around before finding what he was looking for; glass bottles clinked and clanked, and when he stood again, it was with enough for all four of them. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s a perfectly acceptable answer in the social circles _my_ family runs in, but I have this nagging suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the Giddings clan might raise their eyebrows. Take one of these, wouldya?”

“I like how seriously you’re taking this hypothetical.” Sam grabbed two of the bottles, shooting a tight smile at one of the other partygoers before skirting out of the way, hustling out of the overcrowded kitchen with Josh hot on her heels.

The party had been _his_ idea in the first place—Lord knew _she_ hadn’t recognized any of the names he’d rattled off, much less any of the faces around them now—but to be fair, most things they ended up doing as a group _were_ Josh’s idea. He was the idea guy in the same way Chris was the joke guy, or Ash was the planner, or she, herself, was the voice of reason. It was just how things had shaken out. Funny how that shit happened, huh?

So that was what had brought them back to the townhouses, surrounded by other students blowing off post-midterm steam and pre-Thanksgiving break (read: family time) panic, the music too loud, nothing but streaks of grease left in the pizza boxes on the stove, the booze plentiful but lukewarm. Every time they popped inside for drinks, Sam nervously took to checking faces from the corner of her eye, wondering what she’d say if they bumped into Emily or Jessica, or worse, _both_.

“Hypothetical? What’s hypothetical here? We’re young, we’re hot, we’ve got this _fantastic_ banter thing going on…”

“Oh please. _What_ banter?”

“‘_What_ banter?’” He teased, pitching his voice up into a piss-poor imitation of her own. “As if you don’t know…”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Uh huh. Okay, Sammy.” She watched him flick a casual wave to someone she didn’t recognize, then his gaze was back on her. “Gotta hand it to you, though—when you joined up, I _knew_ the whole All-American girl-next-door thing was gonna do _wonders_ for the show, but this will-we-won’t-we shtick?” He raised his free hand to his mouth, loudly kissing the tips of his fingers like a chef might. “Bee-you-tiful. Couldn’t have planned it better myself.”

At that, she _had_ to roll her eyes. “There’s no will-we-won’t-we shtick.” She raised her eyebrows in a silent dare…then stopped. Oh shit. _Fuck!_ This was the banter he was talking about, wasn’t it? Goddammit.

Her realization wasn’t lost on him; Josh snickered, leaning his shoulder against the jamb of the sliding glass door, angling himself more fully towards her. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much…”

“Yeah? Well _me_thinks the gentleman doth think too highly of himself.”

“Ow? Ow. This is how you treat your onscreen love interest? Remind me to never let you sign up for any community theater productions—Juliet’s not supposed to call Romeo a fuckboy. Not to his face, anyway.”

“To be fair, I’m pretttty sure I didn’t call you a fuckboy.”

“To be fair, _I’m_ pretttty sure you implied it.”

Sam couldn’t hold back anymore. She snorted a laugh, doing her best to ignore the self-satisfied look it put on Josh’s face.

He was right…that was the worst part. He was _right_.

True enough, she hadn’t been totally privy to their old numbers—which was really just a nice way of saying she didn’t give a shit—but according to a mystified Chris, their little ghost hunting venture had seen _serious_ improvement since she’d joined. Maybe they _had_ just needed some new blood, an interviewer who didn’t talk with Josh’s low, ominous tones, or a feminine face that didn’t stare into space with dark-rimmed raccoon eyes as often as Ash did…then again, she’d broken the number one rule of the internet and checked the comments once…or twice…

So she knew that Josh had a point. Ghosts were fun and all, but ghosts being tracked down by charming, funny, _attractive_ friends with (an admittedly considerable amount of) chemistry? Apparently that was the secret ingredient. Now, they still hadn’t reached viral status, and honestly Sam doubted they ever _would_, but…

But, but, but.

If she was silent for too long, he’d start gloating, and she couldn’t have that. “Y’know, if that’s all this is about, you really don’t need me.”

“Hmm?”

“If you’re saying that like, sexual tension is what the CREEPs need to be the next big thing, I’m sort of irrelevant.”

Josh gave her a look that she had long-since become acquainted with: He suspected she had something locked and loaded and ready to go. Something _good_. “Oh?”

“Mhm, you guys don’t need me for that.”

“Do we not?”

“Nah…you already _have_ Chris and Ash.”

His face fell then, something in his eyes going flat as old soda. “Sam,” he said slowly, almost _plaintively_. “I need you to just…_look_ at them…” He turned her around, guiding her until she was directly in view of the other two, both of whom were still obliviously going about their conversation at the flimsy table on the deck outside, far from the rest of the party, lit only by the shoddy string of lights hanging between the gutters and a nearby tree. There was a foreign weight on her shoulder, and when she turned, she could see in her periphery that Josh had set his chin on it from behind. “Look at them,” he said again, waving a hand just as Chris leaned a bit _too_ far back in his chair.

Sam could see what was about to happen in her mind’s eye, but there was no stopping it. The event had already been set into motion.

“Now, you explain to me what it is about those dweebs that somehow reads ‘sexual tension’ to you.”

“I—”

_Bang!_

Even through the sliding door, the sound was…jarring. They watched Ashley try and help Chris up from the ground. It wasn’t exactly an easy rescue, by the looks of it. Whatever answer she’d been planning flew out the window as she watched them scramble. “Well. Uh…hmm.”

“Yeah.”

“When you put it _that way_…”

“Uh huh.”

“I guess it’s a slightly more persuasive argument than I originally gave it credit for.”

“You don’t say.”

She laughed to herself, trying to crane her neck in such a way that she could meet Josh’s gaze. “So maybe you have a point. Maybe we _should_ keep—” In much the same way he had, she gestured between the two of them, “—this up.”

“Makes for good tv. You just gotta promise you’re not gonna fall in love with me. This _is_ a business arrangement, after all.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. That’s not gonna be a problem.”

He groaned loudly, acting as though she’d asked him to do something unspeakable. “That’s _exactly_ what people say before they fall madly in love, Sammy! You’re tempting the fates! Dangerous. _Very_ dangerous!”

Sam rolled her eyes, maneuvering the sliding door with the hand not holding their drinks. “I’ll take my chances…” she said in a chipper singsong.

Outside, the night sky was dimly lit with the threat of snow, the air not quite cold enough to make that threat believable. Chris had gotten himself back into his chair, it seemed, and Ashley’s expression was still one of tired acceptance as they paused mid-conversation, turning to welcome them back.

“What, you guys get lost or something?” Chris took one of the bottles Sam held out, cracking it open with one practiced twist. “Fall into a wormhole along the way?”

“Actually yeah, it was _super_ weird…” Sam slid into her seat again, setting the other bottle (and her phone) onto the table. “It took us to this dimension where—and follow me on this one, I know it’s gonna sound farfetched—your dumbass forgot how gravity works, and you took a real tumble.”

He blinked, then groaned when realization hit, averting his gaze as he tipped the bottle to his mouth. When Ashley giggled, his eyes slid to hers, betrayal at once obvious and wordless. She just laughed _harder_.

“Uh oh, someone’s got your number, Cochise.” A screech as Josh pulled his chair back from the table, shoving one of the bottles across the glass to Ashley. “Someone remind me what we were talking about? Something about uh…” he patted one side of his jacket, then the other, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and tapping one out, “…the history of…something or another?”

Sam watched with silent, _palpable_ interest as Ashley held her hand out in a clear ‘gimme’ gesture, only for Chris to reach over and lower her hand with his own. She saw Ash scrunch her face in irritation, but looked away just in time to catch Chris’s eyes, fixing him with a knowing sort of half-smirk. There was some kind of joke there, something about how her own personal game of ‘Guess the Major’ was a hundred times easier if you broke out a pack of smokes…eh, she wasn’t the joke guy, though, so she let it pass.

Josh lit his cigarette, face squinched with something like amusement as he looked between the three of them. “Can’t tell you guys how absolutely _tickled_ I am that now there are _three _of you mooks around to do the…” he gestured broadly, “…secret nonverbal conversation crap. Seriously. Love it. _Love it!_ Can’t get enough.”

“Psychologist’s dream, huh?” Sam joked.

“What _is_ it with you and my people, Sammy? Let’s get to the root of those feelings.”

“Yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass.”

Ashley cleared her throat after having a sip of her drink. “Please, God, no. We were talking about—” Though the yard of the townhouse was almost perfectly silent, there was a moment where the gauzy, distant quality of the music and voices intensified from indoors, growing louder and clearer before fading out again. Her eyes shot up over Josh’s shoulder at the sound of a crisp _click_ from the direction of the sliding door, and Sam saw her expression change. “—Conrad.”

“Uh…that’s definitely _not_ what we were talking about. Trust me, I’d remember if we—” Chris’s snickering trailed off a second later. His glasses gleamed for a moment, the string of overhead lights catching on the lenses. “Well, well, well! Look what the cat coughed up.”

Even before he turned around, Josh was rolling his eyes, plastering on a performative scowl. “_Bishop_,” he drawled, speaking loudly and clearly enough to be heard all the way across the yard. “You better have my fifty bucks, you sunovabitch.”

“You’re not getting jack_shit_ from me, man, I dunno how many times I have to tell you that.” The grass, dead and brown, crunched tellingly, tattling the newcomer’s exact position as he made his way to their table. “I’d rather upend my wallet into my aunt’s koi pond than have to lie awake at night thinking about _you_ spending my money.” He dropped himself into the only open chair left, filling the space between Chris and Josh.

Ah. So _this_ was the illustrious Conrad. He was about what she’d expected, honestly. Sam _guessed_ he could be called handsome…in the way frat boys could be handsome, at least, with bright eyes and a smarmy grin, his well-kept hair hinting that, were he to let it get any longer, it would curl. From her position, she could just barely see that, yup, uh huh, oh yeah…he was wearing shorts even though it was only about forty-some degrees out.

One of _those_ guys.

He stretched out in his seat, positively _radiating_ the impenetrable confidence of someone who believed themselves the most interesting person in the room. It almost gave off _heat_. “‘Sup, creepazoids? Guess they just invite _anyone_ to these shindigs nowadays.” There was a moment where he stopped, posture shifting minutely, and Sam realized he was only then noticing her. “New girl!” Conrad gave her a friendly nod and a gentlemanly tip of his bottle. “Hey, level with me—“ he set his arms onto the table, slouching over them and narrowing his eyes, “—how much did these dweebs have to pay you to get you to join the _Scooby Doo_ act? I hope to Christ they’re at _least_ offering you dental benefits.”

She clucked her tongue, shoulders popping up into a shrug. “Well, it’s funny you’d ask…I haven’t been paid _anything_ yet…but I _was_ promised, oh what was it…fifty dollars?” Sam looked to Josh as though asking for confirmation. He snickered, ashing his cigarette with a proud little flourish; she turned back to Conrad, smiling sweetly. “They keep telling me it’ll be any day now, though, so fingers crossed.”

“Oh Jesus,” Conrad groaned, sliding a hand down the side of his face. “Glad you’ve found another one of your _kind_.” Seemingly pleased with his entrance, he finally acknowledged the other two, grinning fetchingly across the table. “Ash.”

“Hi Connie,” she sighed, sounding more exasperated than downright putout. It was the tone of the girl who always found herself stuck sitting next to the class clown, no matter how many times she got up and changed her seat. Considering there were now _three_ clowns crowded around the table, Sam thought it fit a smidge _too_ well.

“Chris.”

In a mocking mimicry of how Ashley had said it, Chris parroted, “Hi Connie.”

“Dude. C’mon.”

“What? Suddenly I’m not on nickname terms? Rude, bro, très rude.”

Conrad shook his head and spread his hands like he was about to give a lecture. “How’d _you_ feel if I started going around calling you _Cochise?_”

There was a beat…and then Chris grimaced. “Eugh. Okay. Point taken. Comment retracted.”

“Uh huh.”

Scooting closer to Josh, Sam lowered her voice to ask, “Is, uh, this how it always goes?”

“You got _no_ fuckin’ idea.” He let out a loud breath, pivoting towards Conrad again. “Y’know, I don’t remember inviting you to sit with us.”

He feigned a hurt frown even as he glanced down, plucking at his shirt from under the unzipped flaps of his jacket. “Shit, is it Wednesday already? And look at me, not wearing pink. My b, man, _super_ gauche of me, I know.”

“Ohoho! Can’t pay his debts, but he _can_ crack wise! Is that what they teach you at the country club?”

Sam looked away from the guys, letting their bickering turn to gibberish in her ears.

Ashley caught her eyes, the corners of her mouth tucking inwards. “Constant,” she said, doing nothing to lower or mask her voice, instead taking a drink and allowing her attention to drift towards Conrad and Josh. Their obliviousness didn’t seem to surprise her. “It’s like they _rehearse _it. Sometimes I think they really _do_.”

With a couple tiny hops, Sam moved her chair closer to Ash’s, dragging her phone with her a moment later. “So are they like, _actually_ friends, or…?”

Chris laughed into his bottle, joining them by moving his chair as well. Unbeknownst to the other two, they’d subtly formed their own group on that side of the table; it couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d drawn a literal line across the table, and still, they were so caught up in their back-and-forth that they went perfectly unaware. “Unfortunately for everyone involved, yeah, they’re definitely buds. Two chaotic neutral dumbasses.”

“Unfortunately,” Ashley repeated with a curt nod.

Sam waved towards them. “Then why…?”

“My theory? It’s some kind of like, elaborate mating ritual. They need to just make out and get it over with, already. Move past the tension.”

“Their kids would be _so_ ugly.” Setting his bottle onto the table, Chris leaned towards her. “Nah, it’s just this stupid game they play when other people are watching. You get used to it.”

Of course.

She could tell he wanted her to ask, wanted her to frown, wanted her to beg for clarification…and since she knew resisting was futile, Sam folded her arms and held back a laugh. “Okay, okay, I’ll bite. What game would this be, exactly?”

As she watched, Chris pantomimed reaching up and pulling something down from over his head, cupping his left hand in front of his face as though covering a cough. He clicked his tongue twice, and then, in a _ridiculously_ muffled impression of a sporting event announcer (or a pilot trying to talk to their passengers…Sam really couldn’t tell which), he crooned out, “Laaadies and gentlemen! It’s time for another round of America’s faaavorite pastime…_Rich! Kids! Fiiiiighting!_”

Laughing, Sam dropped her chin into her hands. “Hey, do me a favor? Say something like ‘Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.’”

He ignored her. “In _this_ corner…he likes piña coladas _and_ getting caught in the rain! His daddy’s an investment banker accused of insider trading, his mama’s a real estate phenom with no fewer than four—count ‘em, _four_—billboards in town…ladies, grab your Plan B, because he’s the one in the Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts..._Conraaaaad Bishop!_” Chris turned away from his imaginary mic long enough to cheer before going right back.

There was a hand on her knee, and when Sam turned, she saw Ashley shaking her head. “Don’t laugh. It only encourages him.”

It didn’t seem like Chris _needed_ encouragement, in all honesty.

“And in _this_ corner…the man of a thousand impressions that all sort of sound the same! He’s heir apparent to Hollywood’s bloodiest horror empire! The Prince of Panic, the Prodigal Son of Spookiness, the smooth-talking serial bullshit artist…you know him, you love him, you _really_ wish he’d stop talking about NBC’s _Hannibal _and the shit he learned in Intro Psych…_Joshuaaaaa Washington!_”

At the sound of his name, Josh finally looked over to them, confusion crossing his features when he realized how far away they’d all crept. “This a mutiny?”

“We were just trying to get a better view of the pissing match.” Sam smirked, pulling her legs up onto the chair to make herself more comfortable.

“Wanted to get out of the Splash Zone, more like…” Chuckling, Chris nudged Ashley with his elbow, waggling his eyebrows in an attempt to get her to laugh with him. She just shot him a long-suffering grimace and sighed through her nose.

“It occurs to me…” There was a soft but familiar sound from under the table, and Sam spotted Conrad bouncing his leg energetically, “This really isn’t the kinda first impression I wanted to make on the new girl, creep squad. I’m getting the vibe that you’re _trying_ to make me look like a tool.”

Ashley muttered something so quietly that Sam only barely heard it: “You think we’re _trying?_”

She had to chomp down on the inside of her cheek o stop herself from laughing out loud; Ashley’s eyes zipped to hers, and they shared a secretive grin. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already heard all about you.” Sam let her voice trail off ominously, quirking a brow. Then she smiled, twiddling her fingers. “I’m Sam, just FYI. New Girl’s only my stage name.”

“Oh shit, you’re quick!” Smirking, he leered at Josh, “Watch out, buddy-boy, this one’s gonna sniff through _your_ bullshit in about point-five seconds. Gonna run you out of town. Good luck with that.”

“Eat me, dude.”

“Appreciate the offer, but you’re so not my type.”

“Not to be ‘that guy,’” Ashley began, raising her voice to be heard over them. “But we were _kinda_ talking about important stuff before you came sauntering over—”

One side of his mouth pulled tighter, his lopsided smirk boasting a very endearing, very dangerous, dimple. “Sauntering? Not strutting?”

She flapped her hand like a sock puppet, the gesture getting him to stop talking, though doing _nothing_ to staunch his chuckling. “So if we could get back to that, well that would just be _great_.”

Conrad nodded sagely, swirling the contents of his bottle. Sam saw his face change, becoming saccharine, innocent. She preemptively prepared herself for—what else—something stupid. “Important stuff, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Like…_super_ important stuff?”

“Extremely.”

“Business-type stuff, I’d imagine?”

“Yes, Conrad, business-type stuff.”

“Sooo…_ghosts_.” He glanced up from the table, spurred on by Ashley’s silence. “Ah. Well hey! It’s your lucky day, creepy crawlies! Because that’s _exactly _why I’m here! See, I spotted you guys out here, just absolutely _haunting_ this yard like a bunch of socially stunted gargoyles, and as soon as I saw you, I thought to myself ‘What luck!’ It’s serendipitous, really, shit like this doesn’t line up every da—”

Josh went limp in his seat, head lolling so far back on his shoulders that he nearly took on the appearance of a contortionist. Or a pretzel. “Oh my _God_, get _on_ with it!”

“So here’s the thing…” Conrad leaned into the center of their little group, tipping his beer towards Josh in a way that somehow managed to feel both conspiratorial _and_ mocking. “Mom’s got this _sick_ property a couple counties over. Can’t move it.” He let that tidbit dangle, eyebrows slanting upwards. When no one immediately took his bait, he raised the bottle to his mouth, murmuring, “Ask me why,” before taking a drink that looked way too casual to actually _be_ casual.

Still, no one said anything.

Sam glanced to the others and had to laugh when she saw them _all_ wearing the same suspicious expression. She got the feeling that this wasn’t the first (or second…or tenth…) time they’d had this kind of conversation.

She dropped her hands onto her lap, shaking her head as she turned to Conrad. “Fine,” she sighed, “_Why_ can’t she sell it?”

The rest of them groaned in eerie unison. Now, she never would’ve said it to their faces, but in that moment they _had_ managed to sound spookier than anything they’d _ever_ uploaded to YouTube.

“Uh huh. Shut it. You guys are gonna be singing my praises to the very heavens themselves when you hear this shit.” He hunkered down again, dimples deepening with each word. “Get this…the land used to be a fucking _gallows_ in the old days, right? Where people were executed and shit…”

“And now it’s a _house_,” Ashley said flatly with her hand against her cheek. “Really.”

“_Really._ You know how it goes, the place got razed, they started putting in all these huge-ass houses for the rich SOBs who didn’t _care_ about the loss of human life, blah blah blah…” Conrad flapped his fingers dismissively. “But no, see, according to Mom’s people, back in like, the 60’s, a new family moved in, went to renovate the basement, and they found this bricked-over room down in the old wine cellar—”

Ashley rolled her eyes so hard it was _audible_. “Let me guess. And then they found a body. Totally mummified. Probably because there wasn’t any airflow through the bricks.”

He stopped abruptly, mouth open in a comical shape that couldn’t quite decide whether it was a grin or a grimace. “I—shit, what? You’ve already heard about—”

“You’re describing _The Cask of Amontillado_, oh my _God_.”

The dimples disappeared. “No I’m not! This is _real!_”

Across from him, Josh let out of a bark of laughter so intense that Sam was worried he might’ve dislodged one of his lungs. “_Christ_, man, are you fucking—”

“This place has had like twenty different owners in the past fifty years! No one wants to be there because weird shit keeps happening!” All at once the charming salesman was gone, replaced by a petulant kid; his and Josh’s relationship made sudden, perfect sense. Conrad turned back to Sam, probably because she was the only one of the four who wasn’t actively laughing in his face. Yet. “It’s _totally_ legit! The stories, I mean. Not the like…” he wiggled his fingers and widened his eyes, scoffing as he said, “…ghoulies coming out to play hopscotch with the kids or whatever.”

“There’s no way that’s a real story.” It was the most Sam had heard Ashley say to anyone who wasn’t one of their ragtag team. Again, she had that same feeling—these guys had had this conversation before. A _few_ times. “People don’t just find mummies in their basements.”

“Sure they do!”

“Connie.”

“There’s a _reason_ people hate basements and attics, Ash, and that reason is sometimes you find bodies in them.”

There were not words enough in the English language to describe Ashley’s sigh.

“Here’s what I’m saying.” Conrad certainly wasn’t the storyteller Josh was, but as he mounted his second approach, it was very clear how deadly he would be as a pitchman.

God help them all the day he and Josh decided to put their differences aside and team up to use their powers for evil.

“I can get you the keys to a purportedly _crazy_-haunted mansion. That no one can sell. That’s been through a _stupid_ number of owners. Where there’s at _least_ a _legend_ of a crawlspace mummy. _And_, as long as you don’t go listing off the address or straightup name-drop my mom’s agency, I can guaran-goddamn-fucking-tee you get all the time, space, and B-roll you could ever ask for.” Wisely, he’d positioned himself more towards Josh as he began listing shit off on his fingers. “You want full access? All floors? Done. You want to scope the property itself? Poke through the dirt for…I don’t know, bone shards or whatever? Done. You want to do an overnight without worrying about the cops getting called? Done. All of this…” he spread his arms out wide, a magnanimous king to his supplicants, “_I will give to you_. Free of charge.”

Sam didn’t need to look at the others to know they weren’t terribly impressed—she, herself, could hear _something_ in his voice she didn’t totally like. Something bright but sticky, waving just over their heads like an anglerfish’s lure. His self-assured grin did _not_ help matters.

Josh took a long, thoughtful pull off his cigarette, keeping his eyes on Conrad even as he turned his head to exhale. “_But_…” he said after a beat, ever the businessman.

“But nothing. I’m simply extending an offer to you, my friends, to help in your burgeoning paranormal busin—”

“_But_…” Josh said again.

And then they were in an old-timey standoff: Conrad leaning forward expectantly, Josh leaning back patiently, both with their eyebrows raised and mouths set in neutral slashes. One of Josh’s feet tapped in time with the muted beat of the music coming from inside; Conrad’s fingers drummed against the neck of his beer bottle. No one would’ve been shocked if, in that moment, a tumbleweed blew across their table.

The cheap plastic of Chris’s chair squeaked when he bent himself towards Ash, whispering “_Rich! Kids! Fighting!_” loudly enough for Sam to hear…at least until Ashley pressed a finger to his mouth to shut him up.

It was hard to say what did it, but the staring contest broke. Conrad let out a defeated groan, head rolling down onto his chest for a moment. “_But_…” he ceded, lifting his head in time to watch Josh take another drag, that time through a pointed smirk, “I have two itty bitty conditions.”

“Shock of shocks.” Josh chuckled. His eyes flicked to Sam’s. “Rule _numero uno_ when it comes to dealing with the Conman, over here? Check that fine print _right_ upfront.” He twiddled his fingers to urge him on. “Out with it, ya goddamn _goon_…”

He didn’t lodge any protest, instead sticking his index finger up. “One. I need your assistance spooking a certain someone. At a later date, of _course_. No rush on that one.”

Josh’s shoulders rose and fell once.

Conrad put up a second finger. “Two.” His eyes narrowed. “I want in.”

“No.”

“I—”

“_No_.”

He sat straighter in his seat, bringing his arms up in something that pretended to be defeat, “Fine! Cool! If you don’t want this sick, creepy-ass mansion _full_ of dusty old paintings and moldy bed sheets…just…_chock-full_ of bad juju and opportunities to get clicks, then by all means…”

Josh watched him silently. Then, heaving a sigh, he stamped his cigarette out on the table’s ashtray. “Team meeting. Plug your ears and hum or something, blondie.”

“Oh, of course, of course! I know how it goes…”

With the exception of Conrad, they all turned around in their seats (after a moment of confusion on Sam’s part—for the first time _ever_, it occurred to her that she was an actual _part of the team_, not just the newbie looking in from the outside). Chris took it upon himself to hop out of his chair, half-bending, half-squatting on the lawn to turn their impromptu meeting into a huddle.

“So?” Josh asked.

Ashley was the first to speak up. “We _do_ need more locations…and I mean…” She bit down on her lower lip, shaking her head in resignation; she didn’t look particularly happy to say whatever it was. “If you still wanna do the Canada thing—”

“I _do_.”

Sam frowned, hissing “What Canada thing?” to Chris, who merely waved her off.

“—then this could be a good lead-up to it. An old mansion with a past?” Ashley shrugged, “It’s gonna be a _lot_ of research, I’m sure, because Conrad never knows what he’s talking about—”

There was a not-so-distant “Hey!” followed by Josh loudly stating, “I don’t hear you humming, Bishop!”

“—and I’m _positive_ I’ll actually have to write some kind of narrative line for us to follow, which _also_ sucks, but…I dunno.” Shrugging, she looked to the rest of them. “I said my piece, what do you guys think?”

She leaned in closer to them, raising her voice just slightly. “What Canada thing?”

“It’s not important,” Josh said, waving her off in much the same way Chris had.

Great. She turned to Ashley, eyes plaintive. “Canada thing?”

Above them, one, two, _three_ of the lights strung up popped and went out, showering the whole table with warm shards of glass.

“_Fuck!_”

“Holy shit!”

The five of them shielded their eyes, looking up to the string of lights, brushing the pieces of glass out of their hair, and just generally freaking out.

“Jesus _please-us_,” Ashley muttered, tentatively brushing her fingers through her hair. “What was _that?_” And then, answering her own question, she mumbled, “Must be too cold out here or something…_sheesh!_”

As though in response, there was another _pop!_ They all jumped again, but it hadn’t been one of the bulbs right over them, so the only thing that followed was the delicate tinkling of glass hitting the hard ground.

Conrad pointed upwards while he had their attention, assuming a blank expression (though there was an obvious shit-eating grin glimmering in those big, blue eyes of his). “Hey, I dunno about you guys, but that sure feels like paranormal activity to _me!_”

“Shut up, man.”

“The spirits have spoken! They want you to take me up on this sweet, sweet offer…”

They turned back into their huddle, still occasionally picking tiny pieces of glass from themselves.

“If his idea of ‘getting in on this’ is _interviews_,” Chris began, clearly still shaken, if the way his eyes kept flicking upwards was anything to go by, “And you _know_ it _is_, then we’re gonna have to blur his face _and_ mod his voice so no one places the house. You get that, right? If he’s _really_ worried about people putting two and two together and figuring out his mom’s the one selling it, then that’s just how it’s gonna have to be.” He looked to the three of them and rolled his eyes when they seemed unmoved. “That’s _so much work!_ For _me!_ Personally! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Couldn’t we just give him a fake name or something? The fuck do _we_ care if it fucks with Mommy’s sales commission? If _he_ signs the waivers and shit…”

Oh it was _weird_ realizing her opinion mattered here. Sam crossed her arms and leaned in closer to the others. “I’d like to point out that you guys have _no problem_ waltzing through places where people have been murdered, but when it comes to spending time with _other living human beings_, you need to weigh the pros and cons.”

“Think you meant the ‘pros and Con…_rads_.’”

“No I didn’t, Chris, and you _know_ I didn’t.”

Josh let out another grumble before kneading at one of his temples. “Mk. Final verdicts, go.”

“I say yes,” Ashley said. “But he needs to get me _all_ the info he has like…ASAP.”

“I _also_ say yes.” Sam turned her eyes towards the stars, doing very little to hide her laughter. The situation was _so_ dumb. Just like _all_ situations she seemed to find herself getting into when the CREEPs were involved. “I also _also_ want to go on the record as saying you guys are idiots and this so did _not_ require a meeting…”

Chris released an unnecessarily mournful breath. “_If_ I don’t have to blur him, then sure. Fine. Whatever. Why not. But I’m _absolutely not_ rigging him with any blood packs, so—”

“All right, _all right_…” Swiveling around in his seat again, Josh looked to Conrad, keeping his face as expressionless as he could, as though reminding him who held the cards. “We have stipulations.”

“I’m sure you do. You _always_ do.”

They held each other’s gaze for another second and then Josh reached over the table, holding his fist out. “This better be good as _shit_, Connie.”

Grinning that exuberantly boyish grin again, Conrad knocked his knuckles against Josh’s. “Have I _ever_ let you down before, J-man? _Please_. I’ll have my people call your people and we can get this all squared away! Trust me…you’re gonna _love_ this.”


	9. Running through your head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam prepares herself for…a lot of stuff, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little early for this one, but here's some (not very) spooky nonsense for Friday the 13th! ;P 
> 
> (Fun trivia fact: This chapter contains the scene that, upon coming up with, convinced me to write this fic AT ALL. Go on. Guess which.)

“In your experience, what are some of the reasons why ghosts stick around? I mean…” Sam gave a gentle laugh, “Why would they _want_ to? If _I’m_ a dead guy, I’m gonna want to go towards the light, that’s all I’m saying…”

Ashley nodded politely until Sam stopped talking, then let out a sigh. She folded her hands on top of the table, her various rings catching the light and casting tiny glimmers onto the wall opposite them like some sort of discount disco ball. “Well…there can be lots and lots of reasons, Sam. I mean, think about it: For the most part, spirits were once people just like you and me, so it stands to reason that they have their own wants and needs, too.”

“Yeah, but like, _generally_ speaking.”

“Mmm. Well…the one everyone thinks of first is the whole ‘unfinished business’ thing; that maybe the spirit is remaining on this plane so they can complete a task or ambition that they had in life. Sometimes that means actually _doing_ something—tormenting a person who hurt them, or emptying out a place that was important to them. Sometimes it could just mean getting closure—maybe a family member or loved one didn’t get to say goodbye to them, so they come back to have that moment.”

Sam pursed her lips in thought. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. But what about the angrier ones? It just feels a little…I dunno…farfetched that _they_ only want to say bye to someone. I mean, to me, at least.”

“Some people think…” she paused, frowning. “Some people think that it could be…” Ashley twisted one of her rings, staring intensely at Sam. “Some people think that might be…due to…” She bared her teeth in a disappointed grimace before groaning aloud. “Oh dang it…it was…_augh!_ Killed suddenly, right! Shoot.” Her hands slammed back down onto the cheat sheet, covering the words once more. “Like _The Grudge_. Or _The Ring_. How did I forget that? Ugh…”

Sam reached out to pat her hands. “Quit it! That was great! By the time we actually film this sucker? You’re gonna be Oscar-worthy, trust me on that.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure.”

Her chair creaked against her weight as she leaned back, stretching her arm out to the side table where her phone was charging, tapping the screen. “Hey, so, before the losers show up, can I ask you something?”

“Sure! Is it about ghosts and their motivations?” she joked.

“Uh…tangentially, maybe?” No new notifications. She let the screen go dark, turning to Ashley with an amused, if not somewhat apprehensive, expression. “Between you and me…what should I be expecting during this overnight thing?”

“Oh! That. Yeah, there’s gonna be some, uh…stuff.” Setting her chin on her hand, Ashley shrugged one of her shoulders, “I mean, you know Josh—he’s not gonna warn _any_ of us in advance about what he’s gonna want to do there, so it’s probably gonna be a little…” Her voice trailed off and she seesawed her hand in the air. “_Most_ of the stuff’ll be editing crap like you’ve already seen, so like, putting in voices or faces or that kinda thing…um…I’ll probably bring my spirit board and we’ll have a séance or something. I—oh no.” Face falling, eyes widening, Ash seemed to be grappling with a real doozy of a realization. “_Crap_. I bet he’s gonna bring the spirit box…_ughhh_. I hate that thing…” She let her forehead fall onto the table, giving her the appearance of a kid getting ready to play Heads Up 7 Up.

That couldn’t be a _great_ sign. “…spirit box?” Sam asked with a preemptive wince. “Is that like…the thing the Ghostbusters store ghosts in after they catch them, or…?”

“It’s proof that, if there _is_ a God, He hates me.” Ashley’s answer was so flat, so tired, that it was impossible for Sam to bite back her laughter. “It’s this awful little thing that flicks through radio frequencies. Sometimes you hear voices. _Usually_ you just hear super loud, super _awful_ static, and it gives me the _worst_ headaches, I swear.”

“Oh. Huh. Never heard of anything like that…”

“Well, I’m _positive_ he’s gonna want to bring it to spook Conrad, so…” She sighed and sat up again, “Prepare yourself.”

“Noted.”

Though she wasn’t about to admit it out loud, the idea of the overnight ‘investigation’ of what they’d all started calling the ‘Mummy Mansion’ was all Sam had been able to think about for the last week or so. Not that she was scared—surprisingly, she _wasn’t_—but there was a sense of anticipation she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was almost the same excitement of going to bed on Christmas Eve as a little kid, staring up at the ceiling but not being able to sleep, waiting and waiting to hear the rustle of presents being stealthily put under the tree.

It had been…a while since she’d last gone to any kind of sleepover. True, there were _definitely_ better places to have a slumber party, but save for Conrad (she still wasn’t sure how she felt about _him_), the thought of having an all-night hangout with the CREEPs was…well, it was nice! For the first time in a year, she had a group of friends who wanted to spend their time with her, and who, maybe more importantly, _she_ wanted to spend _her_ time with.

That was a good feeling. A really, _really _good feeling. So she was ready for whatever stupid ghost shit she’d have to slog through. As long as it meant a night of pizza and laughing and Josh’s awful campfire stories, she was in!

“Oh, and…hmm…so, um…”

Her attention shifted to Ashley. “Uh oh. _That’s_ a look.”

She smiled sheepishly. “Now, I’m not _saying_ this will happen…” she warned, raising her finger in a gesture that was obscenely reminiscent of a TA trying to make a point. ‘_I’m not _saying_ this will be on the exam_,’ it all seemed to say, and everyone knew that _always_ meant it _would_ be. “But…you know the blood stuff we do…”

Sam raised her eyebrows. “…uh huh.”

A flash of teeth showed through her grimace. “Well…_sometimes_…there are other things we do along those lines. Not usually on the house calls, because while we _can_ do it pretty quick, it can get a little dicey, but um…on overnight stays, if we _really_ want to do something intense, uh…”

“Please just say it, Ash. You’re _killing_ me here.”

“Sometimes we pretend like we’re possessed?”

“I w—what the fuck?”

The sheepish grin returned. “Yeah, it’s…a lot, but people really like watching that kinda thing, so sometimes Josh or I—”

“You pretend—“ Both of them turned at the heavy _chunk_ of a key turning in the door. Taking her chances, Sam raised her voice to address both Ash and the newcomer, “You pretend to be _possessed?!_”

A head poked around the corner, and Sam mentally congratulated herself on being right. Josh looked between the two of them for the briefest instant before toeing out of his sneakers. “Hi there, people who absolutely do not live here.”

“Hey Josh.”

“Hi.”

“Do I even _want_ to know how you two got in here?” he asked, dropping his bag unceremoniously onto the couch.

Ashley shrugged. “I have a key.”

He turned more fully to her, fixing her with a look that wouldn’t have been out of place in an old western movie: _Whaddid you just say, pardner?_ “I have never, in my life, given you a key.”

She just smiled back at him. “Nope. You didn’t.”

Josh thought that one over for a second…and then groaned. “God_dammit_, Chris.”

Ashley met Sam’s eyes and beamed, clearly very, _very_ proud of herself.

Sam, for her part, just raised her eyebrows. “He gave you a key to his place, huh? Super romantic!”

Her grin faltered. After another moment, it disappeared completely, replaced by red-hot embarrassment; the brighter her face flushed, the louder Josh’s cackling laughter got. “I—no! It’s…it’s not _like_ that…”

“What _is_ it like, Ash? Could you fill me in? Gotta tell you, I’m _dying_ to know.”

She didn’t answer.

“Dramaaa!” Josh singsonged. “Hey, but why’re we talking about getting possessed? Which one of you went and read my diary, huh? Not cool.”

“Ash is getting me ready for the overnight.”

“Oh is _that_ what you’re doing? So that’s what all this is.” He crept up behind Ashley, snatching her cheat sheet and promptly holding it up over her head so she couldn’t reach to take it back. “…unfinished…killed suddenly…are you fuckers _running lines?!_” He kept the paper out of Ashley’s grasp easily, but made sure to lower it noisily from where he’d been reading it. “What is your _problem_ with improv?!”

“_My_ problem?” Sam pressed a hand primly to her chest and raised her eyebrows. “I don’t have any problem with it. Know who _does?_” She jabbed a finger towards Chris’s computer setup. “The viewing public.”

“People love found footage movies, Sammy.”

“You realize those movies do, in fact, have scripts,” Ashley drawled, blinking up at him like a bored housecat. “_Please_ tell me you know that. Your dad _makes_ them…”

“—_Blair Witch Project. Creep. Paranormal Activity_…what makes them so riveting? I’ll tell you—it’s the realism!”

“The realism,” Sam parroted, “That someone wrote into the script.” She laughed as he leveled a look of abject betrayal at her. “C’mon, Ash is really good at this!”

“Thank you!”

“Oh please…”

“If you want _your_ parts to be improvised, fine, I won’t judge. But me?” Her own script wobbled as she waved it in his face, “I think I’m gonna go the drama club route, thank you very much.”

Defeated, Josh groaned and released Ash’s sheet; it fluttered to the table listlessly, falling facedown in front of her. He pulled one of the chairs out and straddled it like the cool rebel kid from a 90’s sitcom, resting his chin on its back. “Whatever. See if I care. Just don’t come crying to me when the comments start flooding in about how fake and rehearsed you guys sound…”

“People _already_ comment that our stuff is fake.”

Sam clucked her tongue before quietly sighing. “They _probably_ say that because our stuff _is_ fake.”

“Well yeah, but that doesn’t mean I want people writing about it in the comments…”

A loud, piercing _ding!_ interrupted him. Instinctively, Sam leaned over nearly to the point of tipping out of her chair to check her phone.

“Chillax, Sammy, it’s me.” Josh pulled his own phone out of his pocket, brow slowly furrowing at what he saw. “Ugh. Be right back, I guess,” he grumbled, starting to get to his feet. “Chris doesn’t have his key…” his eyes slid to Ashley, “Wonder why.”

Before he could get up, Ash was on her feet, shuffling past him to pull her boots on. “I got it, I got it! You just got home, so I’ll go let him in…”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason you’re volunteering as tribute. Politeness.”

“Shut _up_.”

Sam grinned, unable to resist the urge to join in on the reindeer games. “Be sure to give him a big hug for me!”

There was another groan, then the door opened and shut, Ashley’s footsteps growing immediately distant in the hallway.

“They make it so easy for us.”

“They really do.”

Josh set his phone onto the table, drumming his fingers for a moment before seemingly remembering something. “Y’know, while we’re on the subject…”

“Of what? Chris and Ash being oblivious?”

“I mean, you _know_ I could talk about that shit all long, but nah, not this time.” A corner of his mouth turned up into something that wasn’t _totally_ his usual smirk, though it came very close. “After this totally legit mummy-in-the-basement-walls thing, you got any plans this weekend?”

Oho! She felt her eyebrows arch as she rolled her eyes towards him. Sam didn’t say anything (at least not at first), simply staring at him to goad him into continuing.

“What? I can’t take a friendly interest in your weekend plans? You don’t like small talk? What’s the issue here, Giddings?”

It was _her_ turn to tap her fingers on the table, her nails clicking quietly in an expectant rhythm. She feigned wariness as she eyed him. “I do not have plans outside of Mummy Mansion, no,” she said slowly—cautiously. “_Why?_”

He shrugged disinterestedly. “I _told_ you, I was curious, that’s all! So suspicious, Sammy! You should really work on that.” He hummed a few notes to himself in a ridiculously cartoonish charade of being casual. Then, hardly shocking her, an idea appeared to occur to him. “But y’know…”

“Uh huh.”

“If you _wanted_ to have weekend plans…”

“Uh huh.”

“I _also_ happen to have a gap in my busy, _busy_ schedule, so…”

Again, she went perfectly silent, just waiting for him to get to the point. And predictably, he did. He didn’t like silence, she was coming to realize; it was almost as though he was allergic to it.

“Now, see, I can understand your hesitation.” He leaned in, the front legs of his chair lifting dangerously off of the ground as he did so. Curving a hand around his mouth as though trying to keep from being overheard, he dropped his voice into a stage whisper to add, “Lotta stigma about getting involved with your coworkers, handsome and charming though they may be…”

“‘May’ being the operative word, obviously.”

Josh continued on, pretending not to have heard her, though the gleam in his eyes told her otherwise. “So how about this: Take yourself completely out of the equation. There’s no need to feel guilty or weird if _you’re_ not the one making the final call.”

Blowing a raspberry to ruffle her hair out of her face, Sam just watched him, wondering whether she was doing an okay job of keeping her face neutral…or if her amusement was plain as day. “Meaning what? I let _you_ make the decision?” She scrunched her nose up at the thought. “Feels like there might be some kinda conflict of interest there.”

The legs of his chair crashed onto the ground when he reeled back in his seat and pressed a hand tightly to his chest. “_Samantha!_ I’m surprised at you! Do I seem like the sort of sleaze who would—” Josh went abruptly silent when she raised her eyebrows. “…wow, okay, hurtful. But I can move past that.” Sinking down into his earlier posture, he waved vaguely towards the floor. “I was going to suggest that we leave this to _fate_.”

She turned in her seat to glance down where he was pointing. Her bag was right there, set against the legs of the table. F…fate? That was his angle? Sam frowned as she looked back up at him. “My bag gets to decide, huh? I’ll give it to you, I’ve definitely never heard that one before. Kudos!”

“Do you have a _quarter?_ Or like, any other coin? I don’t think fate is particularly picky.”

Oh, that made a little more sense than the bag bu—wait. There was no way he was serious.

Sam leaned back in her seat, furrowing her brow and taking in all of Josh’s expression. She took a deep breath in. Let it out. Narrowed her eyes. And then came to the conclusion that he was, in fact, totally, completely, and—shit, okay—_adorably_ serious.

Well shit.

Why not?

Wordlessly, she hunched over the arm of the chair so she could rummage around in her bag. When she sat up again, there was a quarter pressed to her palm, cold and covered in crumbs. Ugh. Her emergency granola bar had gotten crushed by something, no doubt, and she’d have to deal with that—

Later!

She’d deal with that _later!_

She showed the coin to Josh. “You seem to know more about this fate stuff than I do, so do _you_ want to call it?”

“That’s not very chivalrous.”

“Oh, like you’re the expert in that.” Sam had to laugh at herself; what was she getting into? Why was she going along with this?

Well, fine, yeah, she knew the answer to that second one, at least: Ghost hunter or not, obnoxious or not, Josh was funny, and he was charismatic, and he was smart, and he was _cute_, and hey, it had been a grip since she’d been on a date with someone like that. And sure, he was a psych major, but _everyone_ had their flaws!

“Okay, um…heads, we go out, tails, we pretend this conversation never happened.”

Josh let out a low whistle. “Oof. High stakes. But like I said, I put my future in the hands of the universe.” He snickered before waving her on. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Sam got the coin in position over the nail of her thumb, gave him one last glance, and then flicked. The quarter fell onto the table with a brittle noise. “So let’s see what—” Her words went dry on her tongue.

“Oh…my…_God_.” Guffawing, Josh looked down at the quarter with wide eyes and an open mouth. “My feelings aren’t even hurt—that’s a fucking _skill!_”

It had landed perfectly—_impossibly_—on its side. Not heads. Not tails. Not anything. Just…on its narrow, ridged edge.

“That’s…I…huh.”

They both stared at it for the better part of a minute, heads tilting this way and that like kids at a magic show. Only after the shock of it wore off did they meet each other’s gaze again.

Sam grabbed the quarter and flipped it a second time.

Only for it to land on its side.

A second time.

“Okay, level with me. How are you doing that? Teach me your ways.”

“I’m not doing anything.” Sam frowned. This was weird. Really weird. She tried to ignore the creepy-crawly shiver working its way up her arms. Swallowing, she reached for the quarter again…and then realization hit. Without another word, she ducked down, searching the underside of the table.

“Um?”

“Where’d you hide the magnets?”

Josh went thoughtful for a second. “…where did…I hide…the magnets…” he repeated, voice wrought with uncertainty. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She sucked her teeth loudly. “Come _on_. Like Ash’s spirit board thing. You totally rigged the table, right?” But unless they were _exceptionally_ well hidden, she didn’t see anything even vaguely resembling a magnet under the table.

“Did I hide—there’s that suspicion again! Christ! You think I booby-trapped this whole place?!”

“Quit it, I’ve seen the lengths you dorks go to for a stunt!” While she was bent over, she grabbed another couple coins from the bottom of her bag. Maybe it was a…what, a fault in the quarter? Its weight could’ve been off or something. She flipped both of the other coins (a nickel and a second quarter), and both…

Landed on their sides.

“This is fucking _bananas_.” There was awe in Josh’s voice by that point. The ‘kid at a magic show’ comparison struck her again, feeling particularly apt. “You should go out and buy a lotto ticket right fucking now. The odds of this are astro-goddamn-nomical.”

“Are you sure you didn’t—”

The door slammed closed amid Chris and Ash’s voices. All three coins shook, wobbled, fell…but before either of them could spot the results, Chris appeared with a massive box in his arms.

“Heyheyhey! Special delivery!” He plunked the box down onto the table, hiding them from view. “Just in time for the big night, too! Talk about luck!”

Hustling past them, Ashley shot Sam a pointed look over her shoulder. “Do _you_ know what this is about?”

“Uh…” Ash had disappeared into the kitchenette before Sam could pull herself together from what had just happened. “N…no?”

Josh sprang to his feet and rubbed his hands together with a mischievous flair. “Fuckin’-A!” He seemed so excited in that moment that Sam had to wonder if the strangeness of the coins had really made an impact on him at all…but she noticed his eyes moving down towards the bottom of the table once or twice, so…maybe it had. “I thought these stupid uniforms would never show up!” He grinned, making room for Ashley to take her usual place at the table once she returned with a knife.

“Wait…” Sam blinked, watching her methodically slice the box open. “I’m sorry…did you say _‘uniforms?’_”

“It’s just a lil’ something to, y’know, pull the whole look together! You guys are gonna loooove this. Cochise and me? We’ve been trying to keep this hush-hush for _weeks!_”

Packing paper rustled as Ashley threw it aside, digging through the box until she found what was inside. With a pleased gasp, she pulled something out, holding it up in front of her. “Aww! Oh my _God!_ They have our _names_ on th—” She went silent so quickly that Sam half-expected to hear a record screech in the background.

“Uh oh,” she muttered.

Ashley turned around abruptly, favoring Chris with a look that somehow managed to seem disbelieving and furious all at once. “Hey Chris?” Her tone was _way _too casual to be anything _but_ terrifying. It wasn’t just sweet…it was _saccharine_.

His eyes flicked warily between Josh and Sam before he turned to Ashley. “Yeees…?”

“Did I hear you right when you said _you_ ordered these?”

“Yeah? I ordered them…”

“Mhm. So that means _you’re_ the one who like, filled out all the forms and gave the company the information and everything? _You’re_ the one who told them what to print?”

He glanced to the others again, but if he was looking for help, neither had much to offer. “I was…uh…why does any of this matter?”

They watched her take a breath so deep that her entire body seemed to move with the effort. “It _matters_, Chris, because we’re _paranormal investigators_ and not—” With a brutal flick of her wrists, she turned and unfurled the hooded sweatshirt so they could all see it. “_—a breakfast review blog!_”

At first, Sam couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. The hoodie was fine! Black, obviously, and a pullover instead of a zipper, so the logo (a cute little ghost wearing a pair of cracked glasses) and the name of the team could…

Oh.

_Oh_.

Oh _no_.

She grimaced when it finally registered. “Oh my God.” The letters didn’t change when she blinked (not that she had really expected them to), and _that_ was when she started to laugh, reaching up to cover her mouth. “Oh my _God_.”

In the flattest voice any of them had _ever_ heard, Josh spoke up. “Does that…mother_fuck_, Cochise! You had _one _fucking job, man! CREPES?! _CREPES?!_” Unceremoniously, he grabbed the hoodie away from Ashley, inspecting it himself. “_CREPES!_” he repeated incredulously, expression _hilariously_ stony.

The wracking of Sam’s laughter very literally forced her to brace her arms against the edge of the table for fear of falling out of her chair. By the time Chris started sputtering out excuses, her laughter had turned into the silent, painful sort, tears streaming down her cheeks with each wheeze.

“I-I-I thought I checked it!”

“CREPES!” Josh yelled again, waving the sweatshirt in his face.

“It’s just two letters! It’s not that big of a deal—”

“They’re the two _most important letters_, you absolute derelict!”

“Chris.” Ashley’s tone remained frighteningly calm, making her sound more than just a little like a parent lecturing a child. “You…you _had_ to get confirmation emails. You didn’t spot this…even _once?_”

He held his hands palms-out in front of him. “Who _reads_ those things?!”

“_What?!_”

“The subject line says ‘Pending’ or ‘Shipped,’ so—so why would I _open_ them?!”

Sam put her head into her arms, hunching over the table as she absolutely lost her mind. Her lungs hurt. She was sobbing like a _child_. Had she finished off that iced tea she’d gotten at Starbucks earlier, hell, she probably would’ve _peed_ herself.

Groaning, Josh shoved the hoodie back into the box. “Well there goes _that!_ It’s fine—it’s a-o-fucking-kay—_I_ can order new ones. We can just send these back—”

“_No!_ No, I…” It was hard to get the words out through her hysterics, but Sam did her damnedest, reaching up and making a grabbing motion with her fingers. “I _want_ mine. I am _so_ keeping mine.” When it was held out to her, she took it, hardly giving it another look before pulling it on over her head. “I’m wearing this to the Mummy Mansion,” she announced.

“Oh no you’re not—” The apartment erupted into a buzz of ribbing—some of it good-natured, some of it less so—coming to a head when Josh hefted the box up from the table to shove it into Chris’s chest. He grumbled another frustrated, “_CREPES?!_” and Sam took the opportunity to crane her head to see the coins it had been covering. Namely, whether any of them were heads-up.


	10. Who ya gonna call? (Again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam witnesses something strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL HERE WE ARE AGAIN! I haven't forgotten the ghostly gang you guys, promise - the holiday season just really screwed up my ability to focus on anything for more than three minutes at a time. 'Tis the season, right?
> 
> And hey, if at any point during this (or any of my other fics) you find yourself thinking, "Hey Queenie, I think you're being a little hard on psych majors, aren't you?" I just need to assure you all - I was one. For many, many years. These are ALL self-burns, baby ;P

None of the snow from last night’s surprise flurry had stuck, thank Christ. She hadn’t asked any questions (she knew better by that point), but Josh had been _beside _himself with worry about the shoot looking like some kind of Christmas wonderland. What was it he had said? ‘Not the right venue! Not the right aesthetic!’ Something like that, suggesting that sure, some places could be _totally _creepy with a dusting of the white stuff, but not _this _place, by God. Not Mummy Mansion.

Honestly? She was starting to get what he meant by that. By the time they were done filming all the B-roll, opening narration crap, and of _course _the agreed upon three _thousand _takes of interviews (most of which quickly devolved into Josh and Conrad shooting snappy one-liners at each other and Chris joining in from behind the camera), the sun had begun to set in earnest, the sepia light casting eerily long shadows wherever they walked. The whole feel was definitely creepy to the _max_. Yeah Thanksgiving had come and gone, and yeah most people were already well on their way to making Christmas preparations, but just then, standing in the middle of that well-to-do (if not strangely silent) gated neighborhood, it _felt_ like October, if that made any kind of sense. Prime time for chills and thrills, baby, prime-fuckin’-time.

Oh God, her inner voice was starting to sound like Chris. _That_ wasn’t good.

“So this is it, huh? Crossing the threshold into Mummy Mansion.” Sam set her arms akimbo, head slowly tilting to the side to get a better glance into the house as she stood between not the _Scream_ Team, but what she was coming to think of as the _Scheme_ Team. “Definitely looks big enough to be hiding some ghoulies, I’ll give it that.”

Conrad groaned. “_Really_ wish you wouldn’t call it that. Seriously ruins the ambiance of the situation.”

“What ambiance would that be, exactly? Because, uh…” Josh held his arms out and spun around in a beautiful homage to Julie Andrews. These hills weren’t alive with the sound of music, however; they were just sort of dead with the crunchy detritus of late autumn. The mansion’s considerable property appeared well maintained, but with all the leaves having fallen, the trees looked eerily skeletal in the evening light. “The spookiest part of this shit is the three-car garage, my dude.”

Conrad opened his mouth to fire back what was sure to be a witty retort of some kind, and Sam took that as her cue to finally give in and enter the dreaded house. The entryway and foyer were done up with white walls, white crown molding, white oak floorboards…and just like that, a good portion of her humor flew out the window. Which was also probably white. “Eugh,” she said aloud, “This place feels like a hospital or something.”

From above her—_closely_ above her—came, “Yeah, tell me about it. Only gets worse upstairs.” Chris hung halfway down the staircase, beckoning her to join them up in what she had to assume was the living room. “Worse? There’s a fucking _echo_. This place is so big that it _echoes_. No wonder people get skeeved out, I’d be freaked too if my shower-singing turned into a full ensemble performance…”

There was something inherently unsettling about empty houses. The sheer _space_ of Mummy Mansion made it that much worse, too—Sam walked up the half-staircase to the main living area and literally couldn’t hold back her shiver. It really _did_ feel like…what? A hospital, or a museum, or maybe even Edgar’s section of the library: It was empty and quiet and the absence of furniture brought that all into horrible focus. “Oh, ew,” she muttered, looking around, “We’re gonna have to sleep here, huh?”

“That’s the deal!” Chris knelt back down at their impromptu base of operations, a couple foldout tables surrounded by their equipment. “To be fair, though, this shit’s pretty swanky compared to some of the places Josh has dragged us.”

Ashley sat up straighter, having been rummaging through one of her bags. “Ugh, remember that farmhouse back in May?” Her tongue lolled out in a gag, “There were horseflies the size of my friggin’ _foot!_” Almost too quickly to be noticed, her eyes darted to the space behind Sam, seemingly searching the air for something. “Did we…lose the other two?” she asked cautiously.

Sam joined them though she didn’t sit, instead absently walking around the living room, craning her head this way and that to get an idea of the floor’s layout. “No, they’re arguing over three-car garages or something like that…” Kitchen, dining room, something that might’ve been a den…part of her considered poking her nose upstairs to see what it was hiding, but the last thing she wanted to do was _actually_ get lost. Could she live down being a ghost hunter on the internet? Absolutely. Could she live down sending an SOS to be rescued from a guest bathroom after getting turned around? Absolutely _not_.

She had _some_ dignity left.

“Rich! Kids! Fighting!” Chris cupped his hands to his mouth and hissed triumphantly, sounding vaguely like a cheering crowd. _Vaguely_.

The tension dropped from Ash’s shoulders and she went back to furiously digging through her bag. Waving them both over, she tucked something into the cuff of her sweatshirt with a mischievous smirk. “You guys are totally clear on the plan, right? We’re gonna be good to go when the time comes?”

“Oh please, I was _born_ ready.”

“Says the guy whose only job is to hold the camera.”

“Wow. Nice. I’ll remember that next time you need a close-up. I’m gonna zoom in on _all_ your worst angles. It’s just gonna look like you’re about to sneeze in _every_ shot of you. Is that what you want? It’s what you’re gonna get.”

She rolled her eyes, quickly adjusting something else under the cuff of her _other_ sleeve; Sam recognized that one right off the bat as the same sort of mini blood pump Josh had used to fake his nosebleed at the townhouse. Oh, tonight was gonna be something special, all right. “_Chris_.”

“_Ash._”

“I’ll be ready. I mean…I think.” Laughing, Sam threw a quick look over her shoulder. Still no sign of Josh or Conrad. Good. Perfect. If there was one supernatural thing that had been well-established and well-documented in her time with the CREEPs, it was Josh’s uncanny ability to distract people. “I was never much of a drama kid, so fingers crossed.”

The sound of the front door slamming shut made the three of them jump.

“_Act natural!_” Ashley hissed, giving her sleeves one last tweak before standing to lean over one of the tables, pretending to be unpacking her spirit board, painstakingly removing it from its special padded compartment. Chris followed suit, pulling a camera onto his lap and assuming a frankly ridiculous frown, as though the dang thing wasn’t doing what he needed it to.

Sam watched them for a second, muttered a tired, “You guys are freaks,” and then resumed her wandering, weaving into and out of the kitchen area.

“Hey, we’re starting in the basement, right?” Josh called up from the entryway.

“That _is_ where Conrad said we’d find our mummy…”

“I didn’t say _we’d_ find a mummy, I said _someone already found_ a mummy! I’m disappointed Ash, I thought you had a photographic memory or some shit like that.”

Sam stopped to lean in the kitchen doorway just in time to watch Ashley’s expression fall into a flat, frustrated grimace. Part of her wondered if Conrad realized he’d just signed his own death warrant. “Whatever,” Ashley grumbled, abruptly turning and grabbing a bag Sam hadn’t noticed before. “Might as well get _this_ part over with.”

If the first floor had been eerie, the basement was something else entirely. It was unfinished (surprise), support columns jutting down from the dark ceiling to the concrete floor, the walls giving way every so often to open chasms that probably led to other rooms. One of those rooms was probably the quote-unquote crawlspace where the alleged mummy was found. Or a wine cellar. Or—

“Yo, Conman. Your mom ever mention any of the previous owners using this place as a sex dungeon? Because let me tell you, I am…_feeling_ that vibe.”

“Josh, oh my God,” Ashley sounded like she’d just spotted a horrendously juicy spider, “Could you not?”

Why had she expected sleepover night with the Ghostbusters to go any differently? “Could we get some lights down here maybe?” she asked, only to sigh when Josh—_very_ pointedly—reached up and tugged the pull-cord to the bare bulb above them. One tiny little click and that was that. Perfect. Fucking. Darkness. “Helpful. Mature. Professional.”

In their first show of actual solidarity, Ashley and Conrad yelled out at the same time, neither seeming too pleased with the setup; Josh ignored them. He was good at that, ignoring complaints.

“Hey Cochise, we rolling?”

His voice was much closer than she’d anticipated. Sam jumped, promptly bumping into Chris. There was no light to speak of, save for the itty, bitty red dot of Chris’s camera. How the _fuck_ had Josh managed to maneuver himself so comfortably in the dark like that?!

“I—whoa hey there Sam—yeah, I’m rolling.” There was a childlike undercurrent of glee in his voice as he added, “The benefits of being the camera jockey…I can see all of you assholes…you can’t see _shit_.”

“Haha, except we totally can, doofus.” As her eyes began to adjust to the dark, the sickly green glow of his monitor took shape, and she circled around him to get a better view of it. “I will never get used to the whole night vision thing.”

“Um, excuse me, you’re supposed to be on the other side of the camera, thank you.” He nudged her with his elbow until she stumbled into frame, hands out to keep from openly bumping into anyone else.

Which was fine. Really. It was. Her eyes adjusted better with each passing second, the ‘total darkness’ not quite as dark as she’d first thought; some of the light from the entryway had managed to leak in through the crack under the basement door, meaning they could at least make out each others’ blobby silhouettes if they focused. Better than nothing, she figured. Far be it from the ghost squad to do anything the easy way.

“The spirit box is a fun little gadget that gives us a chance to communicate with anyone on the other side,” Josh was saying to the camera. Beside him, an Ashley-shaped blob bent down and unzipped something. “What it does is filter through a different radio frequency every fraction of a second, giving us a sort of white noise that spirits can manipulate. The thought here is that the frequencies are being changed way too fast for you to hear anything unless there’s otherworldly influence at play.

“Now, to really up the ante on this, we’re going to have Ash, the most sensitive of the team—and I mean that in more ways than one—be the conduit between our planes of existence. She’ll be the one listening for any messages.” There was a vague rustling, as though Josh was doing _something_, but the dark wouldn’t let her see what that something was. “So here’s what she’s gonna be hearing…” Without further warning, he must’ve hit the thing’s switch.

Really, Sam couldn’t figure out what else he _could’ve_ done, because all at once, the noise that shrieked to life sent everyone else reeling, cringing away and shouting in surprise while he simply stood there.

Ashley had warned her about the spirit box, but _augh!_ She regretted not taking her more seriously! The sound coming out of the hellish little contraption was _loud_, first and foremost, to the point of making it hard to think. She covered her ears with her hands and could _still_ hear the horrible radio static screaming out at them, its wavelength choppy and ever-changing, making it sound as though it was being filtered through one of those giant whirring box fans.

Josh let it run for another few seconds before switching it off, continuing his monologue cool as could be. “Just to make sure none of what we’re saying affects what she’s hearing in the radio signals, she’s going to have these noise canceling headphones on…” Oh, Sam could only imagine the face she was making in that moment. “Whenever she hears something from the box, she’ll call it out to us. Right, Ash?”

Sam watched the Chris-blob pan the camera-blob back to the Ashley-blob, but unsurprisingly, there was no response. When she realized what was happening, Sam had to clear her throat to keep from laughing. “Well. At least we know the headphones work.”

“Oh. Right. Uh. We’ll…fix that in post.”

The Conrad-blob snickered loudly. In response, the Josh-blob extended an arm towards him, and it was easy enough to guess what he was doing.

Chris groaned. “Good, keep doing that, it’s no problem, really, I’ll just cut all of this. Just all of it. Y’know, by the time I’m done editing out all the shit you asshats keep doing, this episode’s gonna be all of ten minutes long—”

“Uh huh, look—”

“Hey!” Ash’s voice was more than just a little too loud in the cavernous basement. “Are you guys gonna leave me hanging the whole night?! I’m already getting a headache! Can we get on with this? _Puh-lease?_”

“Fine!” Impatiently, Josh waved her off, rolling his eyes. “You good to go, Cochise?”

“Dude. Yes. I’ve literally been rolling the _whole time_. When am I ever _not_ ready?”

“Sammy?”

“Mhm. Ready to grill some ghosts. Or mummies. Or whatever. Ghost mummies?”

“Gummies!”

“Chris. No. Absolutely not.”

“How ‘bout you, Ash?” Josh paused then, waiting, and again there was no response. “Perfect. Okay. Everyone shut up so we can have a clean cut for the edit later.” They all stood there in the silence…and then he resumed his filming voice. “Is there anyone here with us?”

Nothing.

“If there’s anyone—”

Before he could finish his question, Ashley spoke up, startling them with her overly loud voice. “Sunday.”

Josh’s eyebrows shot up. “Saturday, actually. You’re a little early, whoever you are! Do you have a name?”

Her eyes adjusted a bit more, just enough for her to make out basic details. With her back to them, it was hard to parse Ashley’s feelings on the whole situation, but Sam thought she had a pretty decent guess when she shifted to fold her arms across her chest and jut one of her hips out. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then, in rapid succession, “Time. Go in. Apple.”

“Wow,” Chris muttered, voice flat. “Informative. Think that means we should be investing in Apple watches, o spirit of the basement? Buy low, sell high?”

Josh chopped one of his hands across his own throat in a gesture that needed no explanation.

One of Ash’s boots tapped against the concrete floor. “Stop,” she called out in that same, unaffected drone. “Open yard.”

Attention moving from off of Chris, Josh spread his hands out. “Are you buried in the yard? The yard that…” he sighed almost too softly to be heard. “…used to be a gallows?”

They waited…and there was no answer.

“Were you executed in those gallows?”

“Carpet,” came Ashley’s reply.

“Oh yeah, obviously. Carpet.”

“Maybe that means you should pull up all the carpeting,” Sam offered, smirking widely. “Maybe the mummy left a manifesto on the hardwood.”

“Ice,” Ashley said, repeating herself a moment later, sounding perplexed. “Ice.”

As though she’d just uttered the phrase that awoke him as a government sleeper agent, Chris _immediately_ began humming the first few bars of Vanilla Ice’s _‘Ice Ice Baby_.’

Conrad stepped forward with a confident swagger to his step, nudging Josh out of the camera’s focus. “Let me try.”

“I’m sorry, is this _your_ show?”

“Hey, uh, mummy man! Or…woman, I guess—the stories weren’t really clear on that front. Why won’t you let anyone live in this place, huh? Is it a territory thing? Or like…?”

“So I know I’m still new to this ghost hunting thing, but I’m pretty sure you can’t ask them open-ended questions like that.” Shaking her head, Sam watched the two of them struggle for the spotlight.

“Cold,” Ashley said.

Sam turned away from the guys. “Ice _and_ cold?” She felt Chris move the camera to her and tried to present her best angle to him, remembering his earlier comment about looking like she was about to sneeze. Not today. Not in Mummy Mansion. “Did you die in the wintertime?” she asked, hardly expecting a cogent response. She had a strong suspicion _this_ particular shtick wasn’t going to work out too well.

Ashley didn’t say anything.

Mhm. Just as she thought. Shrugging, Sam rolled the sleeves of her hoodie down; the basement _was_ chillier than the rest of the place, and all the sudden talk of ice was making her shiver. “Maybe we—”

“Answer me.” As she said it, Ashley’s hands braced themselves against the headphones, pressing the cups harder against her ears. It sort of looked like she was having trouble hearing whatever was coming through them, but…that couldn’t be, could it? That shit had been so _loud!_ Then she started speaking rapidly, words tumbling out of her mouth into the still air of the basement. “Where? Cold call. Name. Help. Where? Answer me. Gone.” A second later, she’d pulled the headphones off, holding them away from herself like some disgusting thing she’d rather not be touching. “That’s it, I’m done. I am _absolutely_ going to have a full-blown migraine in the morning.” She pawned the headset off on the first person to reach for it (Conrad, as it turned out), felt around for the pull-cord, tugged it, and promptly circled around behind Chris to sit cross-legged on the concrete. As she took to sulkily massaging her ears, she asked, “Did I even come _close_ to answering anything?”

“No.” Josh grabbed for the headphones but he was squinting against the sudden light, so Conrad was able to swiftly duck out of his way, waggling his eyebrows as he slid them on.

“So I just did all that for _nothing?!_ Super cool! I could be at home working on my final projects, but _nooo_…”

“OH SHIT!” Conrad pointed at his head. “THIS IS SO FUCKING LOUD! HOW DO YOU GUYS DO THIS?!”

For a long, long moment, Josh simply stood there, staring. “This, in case you guys were wondering, is why I was fucking _hesitant_ to bring him along.”

“Mmm…yeah, that makes sense.”

There was (relative) silence as the four of them watched Conrad wince against the awful sound in the headphones. Chris, Sam noticed, absolutely still had the camera pointed his way. She couldn’t blame him.  
  
“I THINK IT JUST SAID ‘GRAPEFRUIT?’ IT MIGHT'VE HAD MORE SYLLABLES THOUGH.”

It was a strange thing to say, really it was, but something in Sam’s chest went warm and fuzzy when all four of them nodded at the same time. Friend-telepathy was something that had been missing from her life for a long while…and she’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be on the same wavelength as someone else. Even if the ‘someone else’s in question were a bunch of internet frauds.

“We still set for later?” Josh asked, keeping his eyes on Conrad all the while.

“Oh yeah. Definitely. I’m all ready to go. Are _you_ ready?”

She looked between Josh and Ashley briefly, doing her best to keep her face neutral. “We’re super sure he can’t hear us right now?”

Ashley snorted, “Truuust me, we could be screaming and he wouldn’t hear any of it.”

To prove her point, Josh cocked his head to the side and folded his arms over his chest, lips curling into a decidedly dastardly grin. “Hey Connie!” he called at the top of his lungs. “Your sister’s been blowing up my phone lately! Could you tell her I’m running out of space for nudes?”

Sam had to literally turn away so he wouldn’t be able to tell she was laughing.

“Yeah!” Ashley added, her voice more giggle than anything else, “Tell her to quit Snapchatting me while you’re at it! It’s getting sad!”

Across from them, Conrad frowned; he didn’t seem angry, though, just…confused. “IT SAID ‘LAMP?’ MAYBE?”

Chris nodded as if agreeing with him, but also joined in on the game, loudly adding, “No one’s ever sent me a nude in my life and honestly I’d just feel bad lying to you about it, man, but I don’t like being left out of a quality goof!”

“Wow, never, huh?” Sam asked.

“I know, right? Weird.”

“Eh, not that weird.”

The basement filled with the tinny sound a moment later when Conrad pulled the headphones off. Much as Ash had, he rubbed at his ears, holding the headset out for whoever wanted to take it. No one seemed particularly psyched to grab for them. “Man, I get what you meant earlier, my head’s fucking _ringing_, and—” his voice trailed off and his eyes narrowed as he looked from one of them to the next. “Okay, ha ha, what did I miss?”

“No idea what you could mean, my good man.” Josh’s grin and Conrad’s glower seemed inextricably connected, growing together. “Are you accusing us of making fun of you while you couldn’t hear us? Wow. Do you really think so little of me? Seriously, that says a lot about our friendship. Here I am, working for all these years to forge some kind of _trust_, some kind of _bond_, and you just _assume_—”

He flapped a hand to get him to shut up. Turning to Sam, Conrad assumed a long-suffering expression, “Not for nothing, but you do realize that by choosing to regularly associate with this dickbag, you’re slowly but surely allowing yourself to get infected with…” He gestured in Josh’s direction. “…whatever’s going on over there, right? Did you have to sign some kind of waiver? ‘I hereby acknowledge my sense of humor, social standing, and sanity may be irreparably harmed in the process of joining Washington Pictures, Incorporated, etcetera etcetera ad infinitum?’ Something like that?”

“Aw shoot.” Sam snapped her fingers and shook her head in disappointment. “You know, it never even crossed my mind. I should probably look into that.”

“You probably should. But here, new girl, you wanna try and commune with the spirit world? I won’t lie to you, turns out it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” The headphones dangled none-too-temptingly from one of his fingers. If it was meant to look cool, he was missing his mark by a long shot—it was extremely obvious he just wanted the things as far away from him as possible.

Laughing, Sam took the headphones. She was going to regret it, she knew that much already, but hell, she was already there, scoping the house for mummies. Why not? “Okay, okay…but _only_ so I can say I know what it’s like.” She put them over her head, froze, and then lifted one side from her ear. If the others wanted to crack jokes at her expense while she was wearing them that was one thing, but that wasn’t what concerned her. “I swear to God, if _any_ of you three decide it’s gonna be funny to sneak up on me while I’m doing this…” Her threat trailed off, but her eyes must’ve made the threat obvious; in unison, Josh, Chris, and Conrad grinned the guiltiest grins she’d ever seen in her life.

“Hey, no fair! Why didn’t you include Ash in that?”

Sam met Ashley’s gaze for a fraction of a second. That was really all it took. “Ashley,” she said matter-of-factly, “Isn’t an _asshole_.”

“Yeah, I—”

The rest was lost. Sam winced against the noise coming from the spirit box and waited to see whether her brain would acclimate to it. It didn’t. Ash hadn’t been kidding—that shit was _brutal_. She closed her eyes, let her fingertips ghost (_harharhar_) against the plastic headset, and tried to make sense of the static.

But it, uh…it was static.

Had Ashley and Conrad actually heard _anything_ through that or had they just been pulling her leg? It didn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine they’d been hamming it up for the camera, but it had seemed so—

“_S A M_ _!_”

She flung the headphones off, only realizing she’d screamed after they clattered to the floor and the echoes of her own voice bounced off the walls.

“Holy shit,” one of the guys (she couldn’t actually tell which) swore, sounding almost as startled as she was.

“What? _What?!_” Before she could fully process everything, Ash was kneeling next to her, hands on Sam’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s loud but it’s not _that_ loud, Jesus…”

Sam whirled around, her heart in her throat. “Which one of you did that?!” It was hard for her to tell, but she thought Ashley turned a similarly accusatory glare towards the lot of them.

“Uh…did…what? None of us—oh fuck you dude, you’re not helping!” Josh shoved Conrad—_hard_—when he noticed him sneakily pointing his way. “Asshole. You okay, Sammy? You get spooked?”

“Which one of you _did that?_” Her voice was calmer, though only just. “Seriously, that wasn’t funny.”

Josh held his hands out to her in a show of supplication that felt almost childish in its earnestness. “Really gonna need you to elaborate on the who-what-where. We stayed right here like good little boys, and—”

She jabbed a finger towards the headphones. “That stupid thing said my _name_.” A pit of something unpleasant, maybe doubt, nibbled its way through the lining of her guts when Chris and Josh turned to each other. They weren’t laughing.

“Um…that’s not how…are you sure?” Ashley leaned in a bit closer, as though to examine her face. “It’s literally a radio Sam, we can’t like…make it say stuff.” Her eyes narrowed in thought. “Your name? Really? Huh. Weird.”

Lumbering over to retrieve the headphones, Chris threw an arm into the air. “Shit, guess mummy man’s picked his first victim.”

“Chris.”

“This is what you get for doubting the mummy’s curse. Motherfucker’s gonna stand outside your dorm every night now, just saying your name.” He bent down and grabbed the headphones. “SaAaAaM…sAaAaAm…Return the slaAaAab! Return the slAaAaAb!” It wasn’t a horrible imitation of the mummy from _Courage the Cowardly Dog_…in fact, it was close enough that Ashley immediately sprang to her feet to smack his arm until he stopped.

“Oh my God, quit it! We have to spend the night here! I’m not going to be able to sleep if you do that crap!”  
  
“Owowow! Child abuse! Child abuse!”

“You’re two years _older_ than me!”  
  
“Elder abuse! Elder abuse!”

She shook herself out and ran her hands through her hair to smooth it back out of her face. Maybe it was stupid…_probably_ it was stupid…but she couldn’t make herself move from her spot until the spirit box and the offending headset had been zipped away and slung across Ashley’s shoulder again. Oh, she didn’t like that thing. She didn’t like it at all. Realistically, yeah, it smacked of another one of the gang’s little pranks, but eugh, it just…something about the interaction was _really_ rubbing her the wrong way. Sam rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her hoodie, much, much colder than she had been a minute ago.

The problem, when she got right down to it, was that there had been something familiar about…well, _something_. It was on the very tip of her tongue, an exam answer she’d only just seen on the study guide, maddeningly out of reach. One of her hands found the shape of her phone in her back pocket, pulling it out to check it out of some anxious habit. No missed calls, no missed texts, no missed anything…and no answers to the question gnawing at the back of her brain.

What had that been?

Why was her skin crawling like that?

Why—

Sam startled at a sudden weight on her arm, slipping her phone into her hoodie’s pouch as she looked up towards Josh. “What?” she asked, having heard enough to understand he’d been talking to her.

“You doing okay there, sport?” he joked, though there was a decidedly unfamiliar downturn in the shape of his smirk. “We were about to start poking around looking for bricked-over mummy tombs, you still good to go, or…?”

One more shake, mental more than physical, and she nodded. “Yup. Lead the way.”

“You sure? Cuz—”

“Super sure,” she said, doubling down. Was she trying to convince him or _herself?_ Ech, that wasn’t a line of thought she wanted to stay on. “Just know I’m never, and I mean _never_, using that thing again.” Sam patted his arm in return before striding forward with a confidence entirely put on for show, quickly catching up with the rest of the group.

The plan was to wander through the gargantuan basement, tapping on walls, checking for cold spots, recording everything with thermal cameras and measuring electromagnetic fields to try and spot anything questionable. Given the size of the place, it would probably take them the better part of the evening, and that was assuming nothing _strange_ happened.

But strange was sort of what they were best at.

They were about an hour in when it happened. Sam had managed to shake the uncomfortable nails-on-a-chalkboard echoes of the spirit box from her mind, having been sucked into the ridiculous showmanship of the investigation, making serious faces and matter-of-fact comments to the camera as their impressive array of tools beeped and booped in the background; she was so absorbed in it, in fact, that she almost didn’t feel the telltale tug at her sleeve before she felt Ashley stumble beside her.

“I don’t…um…guys, I…” The guys had been a few yards ahead of them, Josh walking backwards and talking menacingly about how quartz had a tendency to retain psychic activity (though what that had to do with the fucking wine cellar they were heading to, she had no godly idea)—they turned in time to see Ashley swoon, but it was only Sam who was close enough to catch her. “I don’t feel so good, actually…” she muttered, clutching Sam’s arms like a drowning woman might clutch a life preserver. She swayed again, Sam having to adjust her position to keep from collapsing with her.

“Hey, quit it—_quit it!_” She shot Chris a furious look when he approached with the camera. “Put that stupid thing down, oh my God!”

“Sorry, sorry!” He dropped it from his shoulder but notably didn’t actually put it _down_. No, no, the camera remained at his side, hanging down by his knees, the little red recording light still going strong.

Man, it was getting hard to keep a straight face.

“Hey what’s the hold up ladi—oh shit, you okay, Ash?” The concern in Josh’s voice was heartwarming, really. Almost to the point of sounding real, in fact.

In her arms, Ashley seemed to shrink into herself, shoulders hunching inward, and dingdingding! That was the cue. Sam shifted enough to block her, giving the guys a perfect view of her back instead.

“Fuck, are yo—” Turned around as she was, she couldn’t see Conrad’s face, but she had a halfway decent guess of what it might look like as he said, “…does your hoodie say ‘CREPES?’”

“Are you shitting me, man? Ash is probably fucking _dying_ and you’re—”

“Chris ordered the wrong shit.”

“Whoa, whoa! Why bring me into this? I apologized! It’s not my fault they couldn’t get us replacements in time for the shoot.”

Ashley, to her credit, worked _real_ fast. There were few things more dangerous than a talented multi-tasker, but a talented multi-tasker in a time crunch was downright terrifying. The little container appeared in her hand so quickly that Sam almost missed it—she’d gotten it untucked from her sleeve with practiced ease. “I, uh…I just…really, really, _really_ feel…” The waver in Ash’s voice managed to be even more convincing than Josh’s worry, and shit, that was saying something! Sam watched her pop the contacts in, one, two, then blink hard a few times. The effect was immediate…and creepy as hell. She subtly hunched herself closer to Ash to ensure none of the others could see her yet. “I think…I…”

“You gonna puke?” Chris asked, also sounding impressively concerned.

“Shut _up!_” Sam snapped, shooting the three of them a curt look over her shoulder before turning back to Ash. “You gonna be okay?”

From behind her there was a rustle, and then, “Should we be like, calling someone?” Much like Josh, Conrad had never really learned to use his inside-voice; it had probably been meant as a quiet aside, but quiet asides didn’t typically echo like that.

“Will you guys just _back off?_” Sam said just as Josh groaned, “She’s fine, Jesus Christ!”

Ashley went perfectly, wholly, eerily silent, dropping Sam a wink that came across way spookier than it should’ve. “I…I, um…I think we should go,” she said in that same small, wavering voice, “I feel like there’s…there’s something here…something bad…”

As though all of his earlier worry had drained out of him, Chris rolled his head back and made an exasperated sound. “Are you—come _on_. Don’t tell me you think this is a _ghost_ thing? There’s probably black mold or some shit down here making you sick! We’re all probably chock full of spores right now, it’s not—”

“No, I…I think…”

That’s when her nerves threatened to bubble up and ruin the whole thing. This was the first time she was _really_ in on one of their jokes, and while it felt _amazing_ to finally _belong_ to the team, to be a full-fledged member of their spectral endeavor…boy, she hoped she’d be able to pull the next part off believably. Like she’d told them over and over again, she’d never been much of a drama kid.

“I just really feel like…ugh…” How Ash was holding it together, Sam could only guess; she watched her press at the blood pump secured on her wrist, dribbling a few strategic spurts of blood where they needed to go. “Something’s _wrong_,” her voice took on an even weaker, more choked quality. “Really wro—” Her voice gave way to deep, wracking coughs. And something _worse_, something that startled even Sam. There was a soft, but _very_ noticeable _wet_ sound accompanying the coughing fit, as though something was spattering onto the concrete beneath them.

“Aw _fuck!_”  
  
“Shit, dude!”  
  
“Fucking hell…Cochise, give us some light, huh? Fuck’s sake, man.”

Chris flipped the camera’s light on, the brightness of it absolutely agonizing as it shone right into Sam’s face. “Hey!” she started, just as she’d practiced, opening her mouth to deliver the next line…before noticing all the blood pooling below them on the floor. Yelping, she scuttled backwards, crab crawling away from Ashley and the puddle of blood, not stopping until her back was flush against a wall.

She couldn’t see _everything _from her angle on the floor, but she could see _enough_: Josh made to move towards Ash once they all reacted to the blood, Chris panning the light up from the floor to Ash herself, and that was when she sprang up, straightening herself out with jerky, unnatural movements. She watched the guys take in the sight of her, tiny little Ash, blood dripping from her mouth like some scrawny vampire, twin tear tracks of blood running down her cheeks, eyes blank, pupil-less expanses of _white_.

Josh was supposed to say something (do something? She couldn’t remember), but Chris moved the camera up a bit too quickly, and with their legs cast back into the dark, they were forced to speed the act up; Ashley balled her hands up in the front of Josh’s hoodie, he rocked upwards onto the tips of his toes, and then she _pushed_ with all her strength and Josh flung _himself_ backwards with a shout, disappearing out of Chris’s light.

Was it cheesy? Ridiculous? Unnecessary? Yeah, probably.

Did it look _real_ good down there in the dark, lit only the shaky light of Chris’s camera?

It _really_ fucking did.

If Sam had to guess, Conrad had probably _almost_ made it back to the open area where they’d done the spirit box trick when they all started laughing. Probably. He moved quicker than she’d given him credit for! She was actually sort of impressed!

Ash reached down and helped her up from the floor, wiping away her bloody tears on her sleeves once Sam had gotten to her feet. The whiteout lenses in her eyes were still creepy as all hell, but her giggling made it difficult to find her _too_ scary.

“Please, _please_ tell me you got that.” Josh appeared back in the circle of the camera’s light, also laughing his ass off, two dark smears of fake blood shining dully on the front of his hoodie. “I’m gonna need that shit for my own personal collection.”

Surprisingly, Conrad didn’t find it quite as funny as the rest of them had. That much was made _abundantly _clear.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully, which was fine by her: There’d been more than enough action for one investigation, she thought. They finished up searching the basement, spent an hour or so poking around the upstairs (finding nothing but dust and an upsettingly sticky old pinup calendar wedged underneath a squeaky floorboard), ordered some takeout, and settled in for the night.

“Can’t _wait_ to see that footage,” Josh kept saying, mostly to himself, though always _juuust_ loud enough for Conrad to hear. “Cannot fucking _wait_.”

Eventually the adrenaline and laughter sent them crashing into exhaustion. One by one they all grew quieter, calmer, unrolling their sleeping bags and retreating into their own heads as they got ready to sleep.

It was a welcome change from the chaotic energy of the night, to be sure, but the silence of the house was inescapable. Sam flipped through the book she’d brought, casting the occasional, tired glance towards the greasy takeout boxes littering the kitchen floor like a sodium-laden version of Stonehenge. She’d tucked herself just out of eyeshot of the others once it seemed like the ‘sleep’ portion of the sleepover had started, knowing her brain wouldn’t let her rest just yet.

She was thinking about the spirit box again. Had she _actually_ heard it say her name? Probably not, right? It had to have been a trick of her mind…like how sometimes people saw the virgin Mary in their toast. It had been a noise that her brain had translated into something more familiar, something—

Oh, she needed to stop hanging out with Josh. Needed to. That was psych major bullshit right there, and if there was one thing she didn’t need in her life, it was to start thinking like a psych major.

Talk about _scary_.

But still, she didn’t think that was the problem. The box saying her name (or her _imagining_ it said her name) was creepy, no doubt, but for some reason, when she sat back and really concentrated on it…it was _Ash’s_ voice that kept coming back to her. Had it been something she’d said during _her_ turn with the headphones? And if it was, then…what had she said?

“Psst! Hey.”

It wasn’t until she heard him that she realized she’d been beginning to doze after all. Sam blinked hard a few times, trying to shake herself back to reality, but that turned out to be easier said than done. “Hmm?” she groggily mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. A faint, horrendously familiar tingle warned that at least _one_ of her legs had beaten her to the punch and had quite literally fallen asleep.

Great.

In the dim light of the room, it was just possible to make out Josh’s grin. He lifted a finger to his lips in an oddly endearing ‘_Shh_’ gesture, glancing quickly off to the side before leaning in a little closer. “Do you want to see my _favorite_ part of overnights?”

Uh oh. She wasn’t sure _what_, but _something_ in his expression suggested trouble was a’brewing. Sam narrowed her eyes in obvious suspicion. “_Do_ I?” she asked, voice hushed.

He seemed to chew it over for a second; Sam thought she could actually see him mentally weighing the pros and cons. “I think you do. C’mon, it’ll be a, uh, ‘learning experience.’”

“Well that’s not menacing _at all_.” Still, she stood when he did, wobbling a bit until the pins and needles died down. The two of them had made it halfway across the room before it occurred to her…“Hey, so…why are we whispering?”

Josh didn’t answer. Typical. Instead, he motioned for her to keep following, pressing his finger to his lips again.

She held both of her hands up in a way that she hoped read ‘Sure. Fine. Whatever.’ But…when had it gotten so _quiet_ in there?

Well, ask and ye shall receive—almost as soon as the thought struck her, Josh provided the answer. Like a half-rate game show host, he threw his arms out wide, striking a jaunty pose as he nodded down towards the nest of sleeping bags on the floor.

For a second, she had no idea what he was trying to get her to see…there was nothing particularly entertaining about Conrad snoozing away, one arm tucked under his pillow, nothing interesting about the camera feeds recording the hallways and basement, nothing…and then she _did_ see it. There, in the (somewhat eerie) glow of the computer screens, it seemed Chris and Ashley had conked the fuck out, both snoring softly. It was hard to tell, given the thickness of the sleeping bags and the bright glare from the screens hurting her eyes, but Sam was _pretty sure_ they had snuggled up close enough to be considered spooning.

“That happen a lot?” she whispered.

“Every. Single. Time.” Josh let his arms drop silently to his sides. “The _best_ is when they wake up and they’re all ‘Oh nooo! Whoops! How did _that_ happen?’ Doesn’t get old _at all_.”

Laughing would’ve given them away, so she just let a breath out of her nose as she shook her head. “So, uh, _this_ is your favorite part?” Was it possible to make a whisper sound judgmental? God, she hoped so. Shooting him an unimpressed look, she set her hands on her hips. “Watching them sleep? Like some kind of pervert?”

Even in the shit lighting, she could see the whites of his eyes well enough to know he was rolling them. He didn’t risk speaking to her from across the distance; he leaned in until his chin was very nearly on her shoulder, only then murmuring, “You have no imagination. Here…” Sam started slightly when she felt his hand on the small of her back. He nudged her gently a few steps forward…then a few steps to the left…then another step forward, all the while, his face contorted in thought. When he finally seemed content, he leaned in again. “Ready for my favorite part?”

Sam raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

He was so close that she _felt_ his grin more than she could see it. “Next part’s _real_ important,” he said, hand still on her back, breath warm against her ear. “You’re gonna stand right here, and you’re gonna scream as loud as you fucking can.”

There was no way she’d heard _that_ correctly. She stared at him, opening her mouth in some uncertain mishmash of a grimace and a grin. “You can’t be serious.” Her voice was so quiet that it was a struggle to hear herself in her own head.

Beaming that same mischievous smile, Josh simply shrugged.

Now she was feeling conflicted. On the one hand, _boy_ it would be a dick move. But on the other hand…

She held Josh’s gaze for another long moment, the house preternaturally silent around them, except for the gentle sounds of Chris and Ash’s breathing. Sam took a deep breath in through her nose, let it out, drew one in again.

There was no use in pretending she hadn’t already made up her mind. Her hand rose up between them, one finger raised. Then a second. Then a third.

Sam screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time...on Ghost Hunting AU...
> 
> The answer to the quarter-based question everyone's been waiting for...


	11. Ghost?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam experiences something.

Even through the thick knit fabric of her gloves, the paper cup was beautifully warm. There was a certain kind of magic that happened when the air hit the right temperature and you had a steaming cup of something cinnamony in your hands…

The temptation to go in for a sip was massive (and that was putting it lightly) but ooh no, that was how they got you! Alluring as it was, she wasn’t about to fall prey to that siren song, not when she knew the only outcome was—

“Hey!”

Too late. Her cider was snatched up before she could manage more than that halfhearted objection. Clearly not as concerned as she was, Josh took—_stole_—a drink, his expression one of smug satisfaction.

Until he realized what he’d done.

His eyes widened and he pushed the cup back into her hands, momentarily doubling over to expel a frankly ridiculous burst of hot air out of his mouth. The resulting cloud was impressive, she’d give him that…kinda made her think of dragons, actually.

She didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t laughing. “That’s what you get!”

“Mother of _God!_” he breathed, sticking his tongue out, probably hoping the icy air would help. “I think I just cooked my mouth! Shit! How’s my tongue looking? Roast-like? Something a rich weirdo would eat with truffle aioli?”

“I dunno about any of that.”

He whined for another second before letting the act drop, pulling in a few quick breaths through his teeth to further cool his mouth off. “You coulda warned me, y’know.”

“And _you_ could’ve _asked_.” She turned her attention back to the little fairground, wrapping her fingers around the cup as she took the view in. The place was mostly deserted, which made sense seeing as how fall was well on its way out and winter was gaining on them. She had to figure they didn’t get a whole lot of business once the Halloween season was over (the closed-down haunted house told her that much…and if there was any question about _that_, well, the scrawny pumpkins going soft and collapsing on their vines in the nearby patch removed those doubts), but there they were, strolling about with Thanksgiving already in the rearview mirror.

It seemed like the right sort of place to go when you were on a date decided by a handful of loose change and a few errant crumbs of granola bar.

“If you had _asked_,” Sam continued, shooting him a sidelong glance before walking away from the snack stand, “I could’ve _warned_ you that it was lava.”

“Clearly you underestimate my need for melodrama.”

She snorted. _That_ was rich. “Melodrama, huh? That’s a funny way to say ‘I have all the restraint of a seven-year-old.’”

“Please. I’ll have you know I’m _much_ closer to a nine-year-old in that respect.”

“Wow, okay, someone thinks highly of himself…”

Josh snickered at that, old leaves and dry hay crunching and crackling under his boots as they aimlessly walked around, the smells of funnel cakes and kettle corn strangely nostalgic against the distant scent of cold, of winter.

It was…nice. And _had_ been nice since they’d met up earlier in the day. Hanging out with the CREEPs was fun and stupid and all that good stuff, sure, but here with no…no…no cameras or computers or blood packets or Ouij…_spirit boards_ or awful, awful dad jokes? Just her and Josh?

Well, she’d already said it, hadn’t she—it was nice. Very nice. Because okay, he could be…a lot, and he could be intense, but when there wasn’t a camera on him (and when Chris wasn’t there to be Shmuck #2 in their two-man act), a good ninety percent of the obnoxious shtick flew out the window.

“So,” she said, skirting around a pumpkin-headed scarecrow wearing long johns, “Where were we? _Before_ you decided to burn off the rest of your taste buds, I mean.”

“_‘Decided,’ _she says, as though I had any choice in the matter...” His voice trailed off then, but before she could answer, he picked right back up, “I _believe_ it was your turn, madam.”

She scoffed to herself, looking to her feet as they walked, trying to figure out what to ask. “Um…okay, how about…do you _really_ believe in ghosts?” Josh made an interested little sound at that, but she clarified, “I mean, is the _whole_ ghost hunting thing just for internet clout, or do you _seriously_ believe there are things that go bump in the night?”

“Oh, there are things that go bump, Sammy.”

“Har har har.”

He still seemed awfully proud of himself, throwing a bit of a bounce into his step. “I am, personally, firmly in the school of believers.” He held his hands up, fingers spread out, and paused for a good couple seconds. “This is where you’re supposed to gasp in disbelief.”

“Yeah, hard pass.”

“I sure _hope_ ghosts are real. That would be sick, wouldn’t it?” The expression on her face must’ve been a doozy, because his grin wavered for a beat. “I mean, it would just kinda be nice to know there’s _something_ after all of this, don’t you think?”

Nice, huh?

That wasn’t exactly how she would’ve described it. Terrifying, maybe. The thought of…nonono, that wasn’t a line of thought she was going down. Not today. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong everything. “Uh huh, sure. And that opinion has _nothing_ to do with your whole horror movie background, I’m sure…”

“I’m a very complex man, Giddings, don’t think you can boil everything down to my deep, pathological love of gory shit. But yeah, okay, that’s probably _part_ of it.”

Rolling her eyes, she lifted her cup to her mouth, about to chance her first drink…only for her face to be blasted with a puff of apple-flavored steam. Oof. Not yet. “Man, why do they have to make this stuff so hot?! Ugh. Whatever. Your turn.”

He made a grand show of stroking his chin like a super villain trying to decide the next phase of his evil plan. “My turn, my turn…well, I—” he froze for a second, then grinned, “Oho. Can I interest you in a spooky corn maze?”

‘Spooky’ was a very, very generous word. Certainly not the word that popped into her mind first—no, at the forefront of _her_ brain were words like ‘lame,’ and ‘childish,’ and, God help her, ‘corny.’

She _desperately_ needed to stop spending so much time around Chris.

The entrance of the maze stood just a few yards away, flanked by two more pumpkin scarecrows; one was dressed like a farmer, the other (inexplicably) like a ballerina. The stalks of corn that made the maze itself had begun to shrivel and die, so the walls had been reinforced by tall stacks of hay bales. The whole scene felt like something plucked out of an allergist’s worst nightmare.

She cocked her head to the side, considering. “Was that your turn?”

“I…” he clucked his tongue and laughed in defeat. At least he could admit when he’d been bested. “Yeah, yeah, I guess it was. So…whaddya think?”

“I think,” she said, finally taking a tiny sip and scorching the tip of her tongue in the process, “It’s my turn again.”

In its prime, the maze had probably been a lot more impressive. As it currently was, there was more hay than corn, and the chintzy scarecrows marking each of the major turns were looking a little worse for wear.

The whole 20 Questions thing had been a shaky excuse to ask a single, burning question; the one that had been itching at the very back of her brain for weeks and weeks (_months?_ It was still hard for her to come to terms with how long she’d been a part of this ghostly crew). She knew she’d have to ask it eventually, but…ugh, okay, no time like the present, right? Before she could think herself out of it, Sam forced the question out of her mouth. “Any brothers or sisters?” Immediately she took another long drink of her cider, mouth-burns be damned.

“Juuust me,” Josh answered, head craned back to watch the sky over the tips of the wilting stalks. Could he sense the way her entire body relaxed when he said that? God, she hoped not. “How about you?”

“Nope. Me, myself, and I.” With the entrance of the maze a good few turns behind them, things went eerily quiet. Not silent, obviously, but _muffled_, the crunch of their footsteps only occasionally interrupted by the far-off sound of kids yelling and tinny music playing over the fairground’s speakers. “Oh, we are _so_ getting lost in here…”

“We’re not gonna get _lost_, Sammy.”

“I think we _are_, Josh.”

He heaved the sort of sigh one might expect from the heroine of a Victorian romance, loud and long and full of portents of doom. Then he turned to her. “Can you keep a secret?”

She pretended to think it over, going so far as to stroke her chin as he had done earlier. “Mmm…depends.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement. “On what?”

“On…how good it is, I guess.”

Josh didn’t seem particularly dissuaded, just chuckling and shaking his head. “The only correct answer. Smart, Sammy, real smart.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he walked with her, head tilting back again as they maneuvered through the maze. “For your information, navigation is a special skill of mine. I…” he paused, no doubt in hopes of seeming mysterious, “…was a Boy Scout.”

She snorted hard enough to make cider spraying out of her nose a legit concern.

“Hey! Wow.”

“You were never, _ever_ a Boy Scout.”

“What makes you so confident about that judgment, Dr. Giddings?” He laughed, sizing her up from under the band of his beanie, eyes glinting. “Share your expertise with me, please!”

“Well for one, Boy Scouts camp.”

“So?”

“So…this is the _only_ time I’ve _ever _seen you outside. For more than the thirty seconds it takes for you to lean out of the car and grab your bag of burgers from the drive thru window, I mean.” She caught his eyes and flashed him a look, “Am I wrong?”

“Maybe I got allergies, huh? Maybe I go camping when you’re not around.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m a man of mystery! You have no _idea_ the shit I get up to when you’re not around.”

“Blech. I’d rather not think too hard about that one, honestly.”

“Ooh, she tells _jokes_ too, boys and girls!” They passed another scarecrow, this one perplexingly wearing what seemed to be a NASCAR jumpsuit, and he flicked its wrinkly jack-o-lantern face. The noise it made was unpleasant. “It’s your turn, by the way.”

Ah, so it was! The problem was…now that she’d asked the big bad question that’d been bugging her, the chambers of her brain felt awfully empty. “Um…hmm…pass? Is that an option?”

“I mean, I _guess?_ But you don’t even wanna throw a tried and true classic my way?”

“Mmm…”

“Something about my preferred choice of underwear? Whether I sleep naked? Maybe a scintillating detail about my sexual prowess?”

She didn’t need to glance his way to know his eyebrows were just _going nuts_. “Pass,” she said with a resolute nod. “Definitely pass.”

“You’re so bor—”

There was a _ding!_, terribly loud in the quiet of the maze, and instinctively, Sam reached down, fumbling with the thick fabric of her glove to try and get her phone out of her pocket.

“Ugh, hang on, that’s definitely me…” He glanced down at his phone after pulling it from his jacket pocket, forehead wrinkling in a frown.

Equal parts teasing and curious, she popped onto her toes, craning her head to get a glimpse of his screen. “Anything juicy?”  
  
“Oh super juicy. All the juice. We’re positively _dripping_ over here.”

“Okay, ew, forget I asked.”

The mistake she made, if she had to go back in time to pinpoint it, was saying the word ‘ask.’

“Hey, y’know what…” He looked up from his phone, fixing her with a curious expression that somehow made her feel as though she was toeing the edge of a bear trap. “Question time. Don’t, uh, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I gotta know…what is _up_ with you and your phone?”

It was a monumental effort to swallow the cider in her mouth without choking on it. “I, uh, oh.” Welp. There she was, thinking she’d been slick that whole time. Nope. Not even a little slick. Apparently she was so _not_ slick that she could use herself as sandpaper if the need arose. “My phone?”

_Yeah, play dumb with a psych major, Sam_, she thought to herself, _That should work out exactly the way you want it to!_

If he hadn’t looked intrigued beforehand, that sure clinched it. “You’re always super aware of it. Always checking it. I’m just wondering if that’s because you’re a basic millennial, or…maybe…if you’re waiting on some super important mission intel from _el presidente_ or something.”

Well…at least he was joking about it.

At least he wasn’t acting like it was a thing.

She could work with that.

“Just a nervous tic, I guess,” Sam said. Some part of her wanted to wince, though—was there some god of 20 Questions watching, waiting to strike her down for fibbing? No lightning flashed to smite her…_yet_. “Cuz what if I miss something, I don’t know, _urgent?_ Like an email from a professor, or a call from someone who…” she swallowed hard, “…really needs me? Or—”

“A booty call text from a handsome—”

“—super important mission intel from the president.” She reached over and lightly thumped him on the chest with the back of her hand. “Idiot.”

Josh snickered, “Fair enough! Well, none of that is my problem. This is…” As she watched him swipe to unlock his phone, she noticed the creases appearing in the skin of his forehead. Huh. “It’s nothing important, just this stupid thing my phone does sometimes…”

She raised her eyebrows mid-sip, waiting for an explanation that never came. “…oh yeah?”

Whatever his phone was doing, it sure seemed to be bugging him…like _genuinely_ bugging him. He met her gaze with a smile that didn’t do a whole lot to mask his annoyance. “Yeah, it’s the fucking speech-to-text thing.” He looked down at his phone again and it was only then that she realized he was reading something.

“Not working?”

“Working _too well_, actually. It turns itself on at the weirdest goddamn times, transcribes a bunch of gibberish it thinks it hears, and then sometimes—like right now, just for instance—it takes it upon itself to send that gibberish to whoever I texted last.”

“Uh, that sounds like a problem.”

“Welcome to my world. _Luckily…_the person who tends to get most of these garbled clusterfucks is Chris, so…things could be worse.” He sent a brief text, brow still furrowed with frustration, then the old grin slowly slid across his face. “Wanna play a game?” There went his eyebrows again, a’wagglin’ as though he was having some kind of fit.

The breath meant to blow on her cider turned into a laugh. “Depends on the kind of game, Jigsaw.”

Josh seemed a little _too_ pleased by that. “Smart. Very smart. It’s going to be a mean game, where we’ll be treating someone very cruelly. Does that affect your answer at all?”

She eyed him warily, tapping her fingers against her cup. “…who are we being mean to?”

“God, either you want to play or you don’t—simple as that!”

Sam raised her eyebrows.

“Obviously it’s gonna be Cochise and Ash.”

“Oh! That’s all you had to say! I’m totally in.”

His laughter was immediate, and, if she was being entirely honest, more than a bit devious. “Truly a woman after my own heart. Now, in addition to being a _mean_ game, it’s a _betting_ game.”

“Okay…” she couldn’t help but grin—his was positively contagious. “What’re we betting on?”

“Simple. _I_ bet that when I text Cochise in a second, he’s going to reply with a bald-faced lie. Just gonna lie straight to my face. Unapologetically, too.”

…that felt oddly specific. “Oh yeah?”

“Are you willing to take that bet, Miss Giddings?”

There was a look in his eyes that she didn’t trust even a tiny bit, but the bet was weird enough that she shrugged it off. “I’m not agreeing to _anything_ until you tell me the stakes. I’m not a _total_ idiot.”

He thought it over for a moment. “Loser buys dinner?”

“Works for me.”

Oh, like a kid on Christmas morning he grinned ear to ear, scooting in closer to her so they could both see the screen of his phone. “Rookie mistake—no one knows Cochise like I do…” he began typing something, thumbs moving quickly on the keyboard; Sam took that time to sneakily read the rest of the convo.

cochise  
  
yeah whatev  
  
**Today** 4:11 PM  
I cant no why drive no why ache up ate up up up up wake why  
  
oh yeah def  
  
i'll get right on that  
  
quick question tho  
  
literally wtf???????  
  
ugh speech to text sorry  
  
i thought you got that fixed???  
  


“Okay.” The sound of Josh’s voice brought her back to herself. “Here we go…you ready?” As she watched, he hit send and the new message appeared on-screen.

cochise  
  
so whatre u and ash getting up to while im out and about? smth steamy i hope  
  


Chris’s answer was so immediate that Sam had to wonder whether he’d been expecting Josh’s teasing all along.

cochise  
  
so whatre u and ash getting up to while im out and about? smth steamy i hope  
  
ha ha  
  
eat a dick  
  
its just me here catching up on hw  
  
no ash  
  
uh huh  
  
instead of responding to that may i direct you to my earlier message  
  
namely  
  
eat a dick  
  


“He loves me,” Josh said, maybe a little too confidently, given Chris’s messages.

“And how is it that you know he’s lying?” This was feeling more and more like a setup with each passing second.

Holding up a finger as if to say ‘one moment, please,’ Josh shook his head. “I don’t. Not _yet_, anyway…so here’s where you come in.”

“…_me?_”

“Yeah you, what, you think I’m talking to her?” He gestured brusquely towards a sad-looking scarecrow dressed like a cowgirl. “Grab that phone of yours! Check your messages, maybe. See if the president has any updates. And while you’re at it, why not send out dear, sweet, precious Ashley a quick hello?”

Clever!

Mean.

But clever.

“This is so shady…” she muttered despite grinning, handing him her drink so she could send a text of her own. She pulled her gloves off, tucking them into one of her coat pockets; though she wouldn’t admit it, it _did_ feel good to have a _reason_ to check her phone without making a scene of it. Nothing new. Surprise. Ah well. She held the phone up as Josh had and pretending she didn’t notice him drinking her cider.

Ash  
  
Hey Ash! Whats up?  
  
Oh hey Sam! Not too much, what’s going on in your neck of the woods?  
  
Oh nothing…hey random question though  
  
Were you planning on going to creep hq at all today? I think I left my crepe hoodie there  
  


As he read it, Josh gave her a polite golf clap against the side of the cup. Sam pretended to curtsy.

Ash  
  
Oh man, I’ll look! I’m actually just getting there right now!  
  
Really? Omg what a crazy random happenstance  
  
For real! But I’ll let you know if I see it anywhere…and I’ll ask Chris if he’s seen it!  
  
Thanks Ash I really appreciate it :)  
  
Absolutely! Happy to help! :)  
  


She sighed, “Guess I’m buying dinner…”

“I _told_ you! Fucking _told_ you. That motherfucker lied to my goddamn face…”

She slid her phone into her pocket again, finding her cup mostly empty when Josh handed it to her. “What’s their deal, anyway? Like, relationship-wise?”

“God, how much time do you _have?_” Though it struck her as another good-natured jab, Josh momentarily seemed absolutely beside himself with exhaustion. Frustration? Maybe both. “I think both of them are waiting until the other’s on their deathbed to make a move. It’s great. Really. _Super_ fun to be a part of. Definitely doesn’t turn every interaction into a weird middle school dance kinda deal. Love it.”

“Come on. It’s not _that_ bad. They’re…cute.”

“Uh huh. Sure they are.”

“They are! In…you know…a dorky kind of way.”

“Let’s see if you still feel that way in another couple months.”

The maze continued on and on, twisting around in right angles. Sam was slowly coming to wonder whether they were _anywhere _near the end when they turned the corner and—

“Oh God!”

It was a good thing she’d pretty much finished her cider because whoops, the shock of seeing the awful thing in front of them had sent the cup _flying_ out of her hand. It smacked against the wall of the maze before hitting the ground, rolling until the scarecrow’s mount halted its movement.

She pressed her hands over her heart, feeling it race. “Whose bright idea was _that?!_”

“Fuckin’-A!” Josh’s voice was full of not fear, not surprise, not disgust, none of the things she felt pumping through her veins…no, Josh sounded like a kid in a candy store. _Gleeful_, even. What a twist. “Look at this piece of work!”

“Don’t—oh Jesus, Josh, don’t _touch_ it! Eugh.”

As it turned out, the path they’d taken was a dead end; a dead end marked by another scarecrow. But where all of its brethren and sistren had been sort of cute in a low-budget craft store kind of way, the one jutting out of the ground in front of them was downright…well, _gruesome_.

Much of its stuffing stuck out of its flannel shirt at odd angles, giving it the appearance of having been stabbed over and over again by handfuls of hay. Its body, now only half-weighted, slumped to one side of its frame, the coveralls it wore sagging in odd places. The worst though, the absolute cherry on top of this shit sundae, was its face. Somehow—and she really couldn’t figure that part out—someone had apparently jammed an old Halloween mask over its lumpy head. Once upon a time, it might’ve been a clown, but its eye sockets were full of thick black paint that almost seemed to bleed down in thick black tears, and its mouth had been replaced by a horrific skeletal grin, going so far as to show the roots of each yellowed tooth.

“I…_hate_ that…” Sam said, her heart only then beginning to slow.

“Really?! I _love_ it!” The shutter sound of Josh’s phone went off a few times as he rapidfire snapped pictures of the terrible thing.

“Of course you do.”

“You make it sound like I’m _sooo_ predictable.” He took one last picture before sliding his phone into his pocket again, wrapping an arm around the scarecrow and leaning against it as though the two of them were old buddies.

There was no fighting the grimace pulling at her mouth even though she desperately _wanted_ to. She knew her disgust would only encourage him further, but _eugh!_ “That thing’s probably full of spiders, you realize that, right?”

Josh turned to give the scarecrow a contemplative look…then shrugged. “Eh, aren’t we all?”

Wow. That was…possibly one of the worst images he’d ever put in her head. It was at least in the top five.

Her warning had _some_ effect, it seemed, as he unhooked his arm from the monster and brushed his hands off on his pants a moment later. “So. It appears we’ve reached an impasse.”

“That’s one way of saying we’re lost, yeah.”

He had the nerve to look affronted. “_Lost?_ Oh come on.”

“So much for your Boy Scout skills,” she joked, batting her eyelashes in feigned naivety.

For half a second, Josh was quiet (a record, Sam was sure). He glanced past the scarecrow to the wall of hay bales behind it, eyes skating across the other walls surrounding them. It was an expression she would’ve expected to see on someone taking an exam. Didn’t exactly bode well for their chances of escape. “Hey, so, uh…Sam?”

“Yeees, Josh?”

“I have a confession to make.”

Oh this she had to hear! Sam crossed her arms and fixed him with her very best ‘I told you so’ look. “Slow your roll there—if you’re about to reveal that you weren’t actually a Boy Scout, I need you to know I might literally keel over with a heart attack. The human body isn’t made to handle the fallout from that level of deception.”

Frowning, he turned back to her. “How dare you. _Obviously_ I was a Scout. Play your cards right and maybe I’ll show you my many, many merit badges when we get out of here.”

“I think you mean _if_ we get out of here…”

“Could I make my confession, please?!” He waited until she waved him on to continue. “_Thank_ you. Now I hate to admit this, but I’m afraid I’ve used my superior navigation skills for my own nefarious means.”

Sam remained unmoved. Well, except for the eyebrow that quirked up. “…nefarious.”

“It means evil?”

“I know what it means, doofus.” She rolled her eyes, reaching up to rub at the side of her face. _Man_ it was getting cold out there. “So you’re saying you _meant_ to lead us to a dead end? Am I understanding that?”

He held up a finger to stop her, ever the showman. “Not just _any_ dead end…_this_ dead end. See, me and this guy? We kinda have a Dracula-Renfield thing going on.” She couldn’t help noticing that while he moved as if to slouch against the scarecrow again, he didn’t actually go through with it. Aha! And for once, the scarer was now the scaree! The threat of spiders was apparently the line Josh wouldn’t cross.

Good to know. Good to fucking know.

“What, you bring him blood and he lets you eat all the bugs you want?” She laughed harder than she’d meant to when Josh, appearing exceptionally somber, nodded his head. “I mean, it explains a lot, honestly. You always _did_ have kind of a, uh…” she gestured towards him, “…undead lackey vibe.”

“Ooh, why thank you! Always appreciate compliments from lovely ladies such as yourself.”

“That was _so_ not a compliment.”

He snickered as he moved way from the scarecrow and its horrible mask, joining her near the mouth of the dead end with his hands jammed in his pockets. “I dunno, ‘undead lackey’ is kind of my whole thing. Sounded a whole lot like a compliment to _me_.”

“Mhm. Well. We can unpack all that later, but I’m pretttty sure you were about to explain how, like, your whole plan was to maybe sacrifice me to that ugly S.O.B. over there or something.” She jerked her thumb towards it. “Did I mess up your monologue? Do you want to start from the beginning?”

Josh considered her for a second. “That…depends,” he said slowly, “Was it, uh…” He leaned down slightly, averting his eyes to some spot just over her shoulder, lowering his voice as though worried about being overheard. “Was the monologue…_working?_”

Sam shifted on her feet, aware (but not uncomfortably so) of how very _close_ they were. She was glad for his stupid little suspicious act, at least for the time being; it meant she had an extra second or two to try and get the sly heat rising to her cheeks under control before he could notice and gloat. “Eh…” She seesawed her hand, “Seemed kind of rushed. See, this is why Ash and I keep trying to get you to practice your lines before using them in public…”

He clucked his tongue in obvious disappointment. “Aw shit. Know what? That’s probably for the best. I’m big enough to admit that wasn’t my A-game.”

“It really wasn’t.” Fuck a duck, the burning was spreading, moving down into her chest and up into her ears, creeping like invisible fingertips. Shit! The only upside was that at least he wouldn’t be able to see _that_ through her jacket and headband, but damn it! _She_ knew, and that was almost just as bad. “Just curious, what was like…the plan with that one? Does threatening to sacrifice people to lawn decorations _usually_ work for you, or…?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“…would I?”

“Is this your way of telling me you _wouldn’t’ve_ begged and pleaded to not be lunch for bargain bin Oogie Boogie over there?”

“Oh please.”

But of course he wasn’t done—she was coming to think Josh was _never_ done. “So you _wouldn’t’ve_ thrown yourself into the whole ‘I’d do _anything_ to change your mind’ spiel?”

Okay, that was so bad it actually hurt. “No,” Sam laughed, “No, absolutely, positively _no_.”

Josh heaved a dramatic sigh and shook his head sadly. “Damn. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I _should_ be practicing shit before rolling it out.”

“Yeah, maybe.” It was probably just wishful thinking, but hmm…she thought perhaps—just _perhaps_—the Creep Master General was starting to look a bit flushed himself.

Good.

Good!

That’s when she had an idea of her own. “You want some help with that? Seems like you could probably use some.”

“Ouch.”

“Hey, I’m just saying! Y’know, your last idea didn’t pan out so well, and my ideas usually _do_, so I thought I’d offer…”

In a clear motion of surrender, he raised his hands to shoulder-height. “Okay, okay! You raise a valid point…so all right, if you’re going to be my line-runner on this one, help me brainstorm something.”

She didn’t need Ash’s spirit board to feel the forces at work _there_.

“Let’s say I’m trying to flirt with this girl…”

“Okay.”

“And—can’t stress this one enough—I’m doing everything in my power to _not_ build up a devastatingly pathetic slow-burn romance for like thirty years before any progress is made. I’m avoiding the Chris Hartley School of Love in this scene.”

“I’m telling him you said that.”

“_And_ add into the mix that the girl in question didn’t fall for my improv farm horror bullshit…”

“Surprising everyone in the audience, I’m sure.”

“Taking that into consideration…what do you, in all your incomparable wisdom, think I should do next?”

“Well…” she drawled slowly, “Much like when you almost boiled your tongue earlier, might I suggest that you try…” Sam drew that ‘y’ out as long as she could, caught somewhere between playing along and teasing. “…using your words? Maybe, oh, I dunno…_asking?_”

His eyes narrowed. It was like she’d suggested he set himself on fire. “…asking.”

“Mhm. I know, I know. Now, this is going to be a radical concept—one that you might not feel like you’re ready for—but if no one’s told you lately, not _everything _has to be a bit. You can, in fact, be serious about _some_ things.”

“Not sure I buy that, but…” He appeared to be mulling something over in his head. “Asking, huh?”

Sam shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“Hmm…was it my turn to ask something?”

For the love of… “Let’s say yes.”

That seemed to do it. Josh nodded. “Fine, we’ll do it your way, then. So. Would it be okay…” He dragged the word out and she rolled her eyes. “…if…”

Oh Jesus. Sam rubbed at her temples through her earband.

“…I…”

“Today would be nice, Josh. Just saying.”

He pretended to be offended for a grand total of two seconds. “Do you think our on-camera chemistry would be totally fucked if I kissed you right now?”

The look she gave him? Withering.

Uh…okay, as withering as a look could _be_ while paired with a smile that wide. “One way to find out.”

And then they were kissing, his hand chilly on her cheek, her face tilted up to meet his, the spooky scarecrow watching from behi—

Nonononono.

Not gonna think about that. Absolutely not.

They broke apart for a second, just long enough for Josh to laugh a high, surprised laugh that sounded way more dorky than devilish (confirming her initial suspicion that yup, yes indeed, he was _just_ as big a dweeb as the other two); it was _only_ a second, though, because Sam rocked herself up onto her toes, pressing her lips to his again.

“Augh! _Fuck!_”

And then as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Josh pulled away without warning, the air suddenly cold and vacant where he’d been standing just a heartbeat ago.

“I, w—” Sam didn’t have time to get anything else out—her eyes opened, then widened. “Holy crap! Are you okay?!”

“Son of a _bitch!_” Even with his hand pressed to his forehead, she could see the blood oozing down the left side of Josh’s face, alarmingly bright against the bland beige walls of corn and hay around them. “Fucking…shit! Kid must’ve thrown a fucking rock or some shit…”

“Kid? I…” _I didn’t see a kid_, was what she wanted to say. More to the point, she hadn’t seen…anyone. But there was a bigger problem than that. If someone _had_ snuck up on them from the mouth of the dead end, thrown something, then run off…sure, she was willing to admit that was possible, but there was still the simple fact that Josh had been facing the _wrong way_. If anyone should’ve gotten hit, well, it was _her_. “Shoot, wait, let me…here…” She grimaced when she pulled his hand away, getting a good look at the wound.

The gash was gnarly—a jagged line over his left eyebrow, way too deep for her liking. Whatever had hit him _hadn’t_ been a pebble.

“Jesus!” She pulled her headband off and wadded it up, using it as a makeshift bandage to staunch the flow. “Hold this here…”

“Thanks. Ugh.”

“I’ll, uh…” she turned, shuddering at the sight of the scarecrow. Impossible as it was, she couldn’t shake the uncomfortable sensation that it had been responsible. Eugh. “I’ll…see if I can figure out how to get us out of here.”

The hay bales were wobbly at best, but she’d climbed her fair share of iffy shit in the past. She pulled herself up until she stood over the tops of the corn, trying to place together the quickly path out of the maze.

“Hey! _Hey!_ Get down from there! You can’t do that!”

The sound of the voice wasn’t immediately obvious…still, whoever the speaker was, she sounded close. “Uh, sorry!” Sam called towards her. “We need some help, my friend’s hurt!”

There was a pause. Then, sounding closer (and more exasperated), “Can you give me a better idea of where you are?”

She glanced to the monstrosity in its coveralls and shivered again. “We’re at the dead end with the really freaky—”

“Ugh. I know the one. Hang on. Don’t move. But _get down_.”

Her nametag said ‘Fliss,’ but her expression said ‘I’m not getting paid nearly enough for this shit.’ When she reached them a few minutes later, Josh’s blood had very nearly soaked through Sam’s headband, so while she seemed less than pleased to be dealing with them, oh, was she a welcome sight. Fliss got them out of the maze in record time, got Josh bandaged up at the first air station even faster than that, and it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing on her part to get them back to the parking lot right after.

“Any way I could convince you to do the driving?” Josh asked, sounding uncharacteristically sheepish while poking gingerly at his bandage. “I’m _probably_ a-okay, but…”

“I got it.” Like _hell_ was she going to let him drive when he could’ve been concussed. No way José, she didn’t play that game.

“Be honest with me here,” he muttered, letting out a sound that was part chuckle, part groan as he got into the passenger seat, “Good date? Or best date ever?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve had worse.”

“…really?!”

As it turned out, she spoke too goddamn soon. They were only a few minutes into the drive when it started—a furious, burning itch underneath her shirt. Sam squirmed in her seat, doing her best to drive while the maddening itch crept its way across her skin. No matter how she moved, it only seemed to get _worse_; she couldn’t scratch through her coat or anything, and every second passed like a freaking eon.

“Hey, not to be picky or anything,” Josh said after one particularly abrupt left turn, “But if you could refrain from crashing my very nice, very expensive car, I’d be incredibly grateful.”

She couldn’t even pretend to laugh! Her chest itched too badly! So she just grit her teeth until they made it to the apartment complex. Then, modesty entirely forgotten, she unzipped her coat and scratched as hard as she could underneath her sweater. “Ugh!”

“Are you…okay over there?” For someone who’d recently lost a considerable amount of blood from a fucking head wound of all things, Josh was sure sounding an awful lot like his usual self.

“Um…no…I think…something maybe fell into my shirt? A piece of hay or something?”

“…through your coat?” He paused. “Know what? Today’s been chock full of surprises. Why not. You wanna come up and check it out?” He raised his hand in a horrendously inaccurate salute. “That’s not me trying to be a skeeve, Scout’s honor.”

Under normal circumstances, she would’ve fired back some kind of witty remark...but _fuck!_ “Yeah, good idea.”

By then, the path to the guys’ apartment was a familiar one. In a way, it almost—almost!—felt more like home than her own shoebox of a dorm. What was new, however, were the expressions on Chris and Ash’s faces when they walked through the door looking raggedy as all getout.

There was surprise, then confusion, then something like horror, then more confusion. Then Sam lost track and went back to scratching.

“Oh my God,” Ash said, already on her feet, her pen clattering onto the notebook she’d been writing in. “Are you bleeding?!”

“Yeah, it’s a long—”

She didn’t hear the rest of it. Ignoring Chris’s ‘Whoa!’ and not caring about decorum, Sam stripped off her coat and flung it to the couch, pulling at the neckline of her sweater to try and get a better idea of what was itching so horribly.

There was something close to awe in Josh’s voice when the redness of her skin was exposed. “Well _that_ doesn’t look…great.”

“Are you having an allergic reaction?!” Ash winched before kneeling down to rummage through her backpack. “I might have some—”

Allergic reaction? Oh. Maybe? Maybe! The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. She couldn’t remember ever having a reaction to…much of anything, really, but what else could this be?

“Could I…can I steal your shower for a minute?”

“Y-y-yeah, go ahead—are you sure you’re—”

Whatever Chris said after that was lost on her. Sam all but _ran_ into the bathroom, running the water and peeling her clothes off.

The water helped, but she didn’t like what she saw. From her left shoulder, down across her chest, ending just at the curve of her right ribs, there was a frightening series of raised red welts. Three or four of them, actually, sort of giving the appearance of a wild animal attack. They weren’t bleeding, but boy did they _itch_ and _burn_ and that wasn’t normal. That wasn’t good. And she was completely at a loss for what could’ve done it—other than the seatbelt, she hadn’t worn anything that crossed over her chest like that, and she _definitely_ hadn’t scratched herself that hard…

A bug? It must’ve been a bug. It fell into her sweater and went on a biting spree. Gross. Terrible. But it made sense, right?

Right?

She stepped out of the shower amid a ridiculous burst of steam; without a fan, the tiny bathroom was essentially a sauna, the air thick and almost unbearably hot. Well, at least it was making sense why the wallpaper was so gross…and why they had so many bottles of mildew cleaner. Ech.

Sam wrapped herself up in the towel, bending over the tub to wring her hair out one last time before going to pick up her clothes and—

Oh come _on_.

The steam had fogged the mirror to the point of it seeming frosted. That wasn’t what got her, though. No, what got her was what was _written in _the steam.

where are you

…no fucking way.

Sam stared, transfixed. It took a few seconds for the initial shock, the outright _horror_ of it, to fade enough that she could lean forward and inspect it. The lowercase letters were what got her. Would it have been less upsetting if it had been written in over-the-top capitals? Probably. The lowercase felt more accusatory, somehow, and less hacky. Slowly, with a shaking hand, she reached out, running her own index finger down the steamed glass. Each letter was about as thick as a fingertip (what a surprise), and the bottoms seemed to bleed, droplets of condensation rolling down the mirror as though…

Mother. _Fucker_.

As though someone had _just_ written it.

Her head snapped from one side of the bathroom to the other, the Bloody Mary prank surging to the forefront of her memory. “_Asshole!_” she muttered, quickly pulling her clothes on. This shit had Josh’s name allllll over it, and regardless of everything else, sneaking in while she was showering? That was a line you didn’t _cross!_ Who the fuck did he think he—

The knob to Josh’s room stuck fast when she turned it.

That didn’t mean it _hadn’t_ been Josh…it just meant he’d thought he was slick by using—

The knob to Chris’s room was _also_ locked tight.

Sam stopped, hand on the door, and looked over her shoulder to the mirror again.

where are you

After everything else, she thought she’d kept a pretty good sense of humor. She could laugh at herself! And she _had_, but something about this _specifically_ was rustling _all_ of her jimmies. For another long moment, she just looked at the mirror, the cramped space keeping the steam from the shower hanging in the air…which in turn kept the message looking eerily fresh.

This was too much.

Too, too much.

Which one of them had gone through her fucking phone?!

She undid the lock to Chris’s room, storming out into the shared space of the apartment. The other three were gathered around the table, per the usual, Chris’s arms spread wide as he talked, Ashley pretending not to laugh, Josh mid-eye roll; they all stopped and turned to her, wide-eyed, when she stomped her way over to them. Only belatedly did she realize she must’ve looked like a drowning victim—hair still dripping, clothes clinging damply to her. “That wasn’t _cool_,” she said sharply, whipping an arm out towards the bathroom. “And it sure wasn’t _funny!_ I get it, the ghost thing is _hi-larious_, but not like _that_, okay?! That was creepy in a _real_ different way!”

There was silence as the others exchanged glances.

“…what wasn’t cool?” Chris had the good sense to drop his hands onto the table instead of keeping up the pantomime.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Oh, I can promise you, the dumb is not an act. It’s just me.”

She wasn’t in the mood to laugh. “Which one of you did the mirror thing?”

“Uh…?”

Ashley’s eyebrows drew inward in concern. “Mirror thing? Wh—like the Bloody Ma—”

“No Ash, not the Bloody Mary thing, the thing that _just_ happened _right now_.” She continued to glare, but no one seemed to react. “The _writing_.” Nothing. Sam threw her hands up with an incensed groan. “Not cute! None of this is cute! Does privacy mean _nothing_ to you guys?! Honestly, which one of you thought it would be a good idea to walk in on me while I was naked, huh?” Pointedly, she turned her gaze on Josh, who _immediately_ reeled back in his chair.

“Whoa. Death glare, much? Why’re you looking at _me?_”

In lieu of a response, Sam set her hands on her hips, cocking her head to the side.

“Sam…” Ashley began again, speaking slowly, almost to the extent of sounding uncertain. “We’ve all been sitting here since you left. No one…” her brow furrowed as she looked between Chris and Josh, “…no one _moved_. Not even to go to the fridge.” She met Sam’s gaze again, shaking her head apprehensively. “Whatever you’re talking about, um…none of us did it.”

“Y’know, I’d probably believe you a _little_ more, Ash, if I hadn’t seen how _great_ all of you are at lying to people.” She felt a pang of guilt when Ashley’s expression crumpled, but it was a distant thing, muted by her indignation. “So seriously, grow up, and maybe _think_ before you do stupid shit like that.” With that, she snatched her bag up off the couch, checked to make sure her phone was there, and made a beeline for the door.

“Hey, whoa, Sam—” Josh’s chair squealed in protest as he pushed back from the table, “Hang on a sec! What about dinner?”

She’d gotten the front door open a fraction of an inch before Josh wedged his foot against it, keeping her from leaving. It wasn’t a move that _helped_ her mood. She whirled on him, scrutinizing his confusion for any hilt of guilt. Not that it _mattered_, of course, because if _any_ of them could wriggle their way out of getting in trouble, she knew it would be _him_. Psych major Josh, face of the operation Josh, ‘Who, little old me?’ Josh.

“Want some friendly advice?” she asked, wondering when her voice had developed such an edge. “Scaring people isn’t how you make friends.”

“_Sam_. I am being as straight with you as I _can_. No one went into the bathroom.”

“Get over yourself—”

“I’m serious! I—_look_, the doors lock from the _inside!_ How would anyone—”

“Maybe you guys have keys. Maybe you have them rigged like you do everything else! I don’t know, and honestly Josh, I don’t _care_. I’m tired. I’m going home, going to bed, and that’s it. So if you don’t mind.” She held his stare, unimpressed and more than a little annoyed, until he raised his hands defensively and took a step back from the door.

Sam wrenched it open and stepped into the hallway, ignoring the weight of their eyes on her back. She slammed the door shut behind her.

She walked to her dorm without looking back, phone clutched tight in her hand. When she got to her dorm, closing and locking the door behind her, that was when her legs finally gave out, shaky sticks of Jell-o that couldn’t support her weight. She slid to the floor, curled into herself, and for a long time, that was that.


	12. Busted.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is forced to accept something she knew all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I KNOW y'all didn't think I'd write anything COMPLETELY angst-free, right??? ;P
> 
> Be warned: There's some light, comedic body horror in here. Did I ever think I'd write the words "comedic body horror" like that? No. No I did not. But life takes us in strange directions, doesn't it?

"Okay, serious question time, now that you’re done busting my chops.” Conrad leaned in closer to the center of their semi-circle, hands dangling between his knees. “Have you guys ever seen _anything_ that could possibly be real? Shit you couldn’t explain?”

Before anyone could say anything, Sam held her hands up in front of herself. It was more instinct than anything else, and really she doubted he could even _see_ it, what with how she was sitting with her back to them all, but she did it all the same. “Don’t look at me, I’m the newbie here. I haven’t gone looking for anything creepy _or_ crawly until I joined up.”

“Fair enough.” Conrad turned his attention to the others. When there wasn’t an immediate response from any of them, he gestured impatiently. “Dorks?”

The three of them stared thoughtfully at one another, brows furrowed. “Uh…” Ashley slowly muttered, “N…no. No, I don’t think so?”

“Hey, that’s not true! What about that Polaroid from Cochise’s aunt’s house?” Josh puffed himself up defensively. “That shit was pretty convincing.”

Chris groaned, not deigning to look away from his editing. “Dude. For the _millionth time_, that was a fucking moth.”

“Oh please. That was a top quality orb, my doubtful friend. Legit ghost material.”

“It was a _moth_.”

“Orb.”

“It had _eyes!_”

“Haunting, ghostly eyes.” He pretended to drop his voice, shielding his mouth with his hand and bending down closer to Sam. Other than a slight tightening at the corner of her mouth, she didn’t react. “Stared right into my very _soul_. Laid my whole person bare. The pure sense of _knowing_ in those eyes…the _hatred_ in that stare…”

“It had wings and antennas!”

“_Antennae_.”

“Thanks, Ash. No one would’ve understood what I meant otherwise.”

Josh went quiet for a beat…then shrugged. “Could’ve been the ghost of a moth.”

Ashley pulled her legs up towards the rest of her body with a grimace. “Oh ew. No thanks, don’t need to think about _that_ possibility. Blech.”

Sam listened to the others laugh from her spot on the floor, back tucked against the side of the couch, notebook in her lap, phone right next to her, pen tucked into the loose knot of her hair. She didn’t look their way. Nope. She just kept highlighting her notes every so often, jotting brief answers down onto her study guide.

They wanted to her look, she knew…well, okay, not _all_ of them, Conrad probably didn’t care too much one way or another, but there was no denying the crackle of tension in the air when it came to the other CREEPs. They wanted her to look because they wanted her to join in. They wanted her to join in because it would mean she wasn’t angry anymore.

And to be fair, she wasn’t.

Not _totally_. Not as angry as she _had_ been. She’d showed up for today’s session, hadn’t she? She’d played nice and watched the episode, had helped with getting Conrad’s exit interview filmed and everything else that went with it. Angry people didn’t typically do those things. So no, she wasn’t _angry_.

That didn’t mean she was over it.

By then, the itching welts had disappeared, Josh’s wound was little more than a scab over his eye, and there hadn’t been any more mysterious messages written on mirrors, but…but shit was weird. Clearly.

From the moment she’d stormed out of the apartment the last time, her phone had been positively _alive_ with text messages, one after another after another after another, just _dingdingding_, apologies and reassurances flooding in. That was fine—she appreciated it, to be sure—but here was still one huge problem. Namely, no one was owning up to it. No one.

Ashley she believed, and Ashley she had forgiven pretty quickly. There was a world of difference between putting on some scary contacts to startle someone and creeping into a bathroom where someone was naked and vulnerable to rile them up with a ghostly message. She just wasn’t the type!

Chris…she could go either way on Chris. He _had_, after all, snuck into the bathroom to scare her _before_ with the Bloody Mary trick…but he _also_ struck her as the sort of guy who plain ol’ short-circuited at the very _thought_ of a naked girl, so he didn’t feel like the strongest suspect.

Here’s where the problem got even stickier: The prank had Josh’s name all over it. Top to bottom, left to right, front to back, this felt like a Josh-Wash production. But he’d been the one blowing up her phone the most, the one promising he hadn’t done _anything_, and…well fuck, she actually believed him. Now, how much of that belief boiled down to him being charming and handsome? That she wasn’t sure she was willing to admit to herself.

The fact remained that _someone_ had done that terrible, mean, _cruel_ thing to her. And the message they’d chosen? That was what put the last nail in the coffin—there was no way _that_ had been a coincidence. It was intentional—it _had_ to be—which meant one of them had…what, gone through her phone? Listened to her voicemails? Sat through that shit to make sense out of—

That was where she kept getting hung up. When she got that far into the rationale, it just didn’t make sense. There were too many variables, too many improbabilities, and it usually ended with her thinking herself into a gnarly headache. So yeah, she was trying (and failing) not to think about it too much. But _oof_, in the meantime, there was no denying shit was _uncomfy_ between them.

“Stop acting so high and mighty, Connie, it—”

“Dude, for the last time, don’t call me Connie.”

“Everyone calls you Connie. I just want in on that action.”

“Ohoho, no everyone does _not_.”

Ah, it seemed she’d chosen a great time to come back to the conversation. This was how the whole day had been going—Josh and Conrad sniping back and forth at each other. It was good-natured for the most part, sure, but yikes if there wasn’t a subtle undercurrent of actual frustration there. As it turned out, the episode had turned out a bit, uh, _differently _than Conrad had been hoping.

Meaning, of course, the gang had foregone their usual schtick of playing up all the fakey fake stuff as real, to instead spend the whole time rationalizing and explaining away all the would-be supernatural happenings as perfectly natural. (They’d made it two minutes into the segment where Josh explained how electromagnetic fields could make someone feel as though they were being watched when the first elbow had been thrown, and it had been downhill ever since.) She tapped her pen against her notebook, letting her eyes roll to the ceiling as it played out.

“What’s so hard to get? ‘Connie’ is _exclusively_ for family and the ladies.” He swept an arm out towards Ash, who promptly made a noise of disbelief. “Ladies such as our lovely, _lovely_ Miss Brown, here.”

Josh leveled his stare at him. “Am I not a pretty enough lady for you? You are unbelievable, man. You come into _my_ home, insult _my_ feminine wiles…”

“You’re not a pretty enough _anything_ for me, Washington.”

“This is why no one likes you, Bishop.”

“Uh, pretty sure your mom does. Pretty sure she likes me a _whole lot, _in fact.”

“Heyheyhey, not to press the pause button on this meeting of the minds, but…” Chris swiveled around, regarding Conrad over the frames of his glasses with an expression Sam _had_ to figure was supposed to be pensive. To _her_, he looked more like someone perusing the cold cuts at the deli counter. “Let’s do this scientifically. Can _I_ call you Connie?”

“Only if _I_ can call you Cochise.”

“Okay, so that’s a hard no. Can Ash?”

“Yeah. I literally…just said that. Keep up, Cochise.”

“I said _no_. How about Michelle Obama?”

“I mean, sure? If she wants to. I wouldn’t turn her down.”

“Nic Cage?”

“No.”

“Wow, okay, rude, I’m sure you’ll be hearing from his people about that. The man is a national treasure. What about Josh?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“Interesting! And Sam?”

“I mean…”

She’d perked up at the sound of her own name, but the sheer intensity of the uncertainty in Conrad’s voice—and when she looked at him, hell, the uncertainty in his _face_—took her aback. “Oh, uh. Should I be insulted?”

“No—_no_. You could call me Connie if the spirit moved you,” he continued, still looking almost unsettled.

“Uh, thanks.”

“Nice, man. Real nice. You come into my home, you insult _Sammy’s_ feminine wiles…”

“_No_, I…it’s nothing _personal_,” he tried to assure her (not that she really _cared_ one way or another…the chances of her being possessed by an unquenchable desire to call him ‘Connie’ were slim and none). “You just…”

“What?” Josh taunted. “Say it.”

Without turning to him, Conrad flipped him the bird. “You look _just_ enough like my sister that it would be weird. Like, you don’t look _exactly_ like her, but it’s really, _really_ close, and—” He _did_ turn to Josh then, his entire demeanor changing as though a switch had been flipped. “Hey! So, speaking of my sister…do you remember the terms of our little arrangement?”

He rolled his eyes to the point that only the whites showed. “Uh, yeah. You took us to a dingy, late-80’s split-level with no ghosts and lots of dust, and in return, you got to pretend like you had friends for a night.”

“Ooh, burn!”

Conrad ignored Chris entirely (who could blame him?), sticking an accusatory finger in Josh’s face as he rounded on him. “And! _And_…you said you’d scare someone for me.”

Josh watched him coolly. “Pretty sure we did that too.” He waved and Chris hit a button on his keyboard. From behind them, an endless loop of Conrad shouting out in surprise began to play.

“Eugh, chalk that up as the worst Skrillex song ever written.” Ashley plunked herself on the floor next to Sam with a joking wink, and she returned the smile maybe just a bit tighter than it had needed to be.

“Ha ha. Funny. Real funny. You guys are a real Abbott and Costello, huh? Look, if you’re gonna be a little shit and renege on our deal…”

“Oh blah blah blah…would you quit yapping and get to the point already, man?”

He clapped once, rubbing his hands together mischievously. “Okay, okay, so. The chump in question is JJ’s boyfriend. Just need to get a good scare in to fuck with his bullshit macho act—”

“Wait, Alex?”

“How did y…oh shit, right, you’re friends with Brad, aren’t you? Ugh! God—don’t you bring _him_ in on this! I think we all know Bradical’s a man of many talents, but subterfuge? Not one of ‘em.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Bless his little heart, he tries.”

“Does he?”

“What, precisely, did the elder Smith do to get in your bad book?” Josh sniffed disinterestedly, meaning that he was, in fact, extremely interested. “Never pegged you as the protective sort, Conman.”

He blew a raspberry that tapered off into a snicker. “Protective? Nah, not me. This is just, uh…_initiation!_ What are we older brothers good for, if not putting the fear of God into baby sis’s prospective datemates, right? I mean,” he chuckled, nudging Josh with his elbow, “You know what _that’s_ like. It’s our job!”

She wasn’t sure what made her do it, but Sam felt herself frowning, the muscles of her face almost _aching_ with the effort.

“I’ll fucking think about it.”

“_Think _about it? You _promised!_”

“Yeah, and _you_ promised _us_ a mummy man, so…”

“I did not _promise_ you a mummy. I said—”

“Ah, and now you’re gonna make up a whole _new_ load of crap and try to sell me on it, huh? Not how it works.”

“I’m not making anything up!”

“Oh bull-fucking-shit, dude, you’re—”

“All I did was tell you what my mom told _me_, okay? I can’t control the information that’s passed on to me—I can only convey it to you…”

“Christ alive…”

“…in a manner that’s both truthful _and_ entertaining!” He shoved Josh’s hand away from him mid-finger waggle, his momentum far from thrown off. “I didn’t say _we’d_ find a mummy, I said someone else _did!_ Once. A while ago. But—_but!_ That wasn’t the only story she got from the previous homeowners!”

Though she wasn’t facing him directly, Sam heard the squeak of Chris’s chair and could so easily picture the look he must’ve had on his face as he gave up editing. The siren song of Rich! Kids! Fighting!, America’s favorite game show, proved too be too much for him to resist.

Ashley seemed _significantly_ less interested. “Sometimes,” she said to Sam, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper, “They reallllly make me wish I’d taken a job editing freshman term papers in the writing lab instead of…” Barely glancing over her shoulder, she waved vaguely towards their little powwow, “…_this_.”

“I know the feeling.”

“For real,” Conrad was still saying, even amid Josh’s grunts and groans of frustration, “Get this: The guy who owned the place before the most recent couple? He _died_ in there!”

“Uh huh.”

“_In the shower!_ He didn’t have any family or anything, so it took the mail people noticing that his mailbox was crammed full to go ‘Huh, wonder where this sad sap is.’ So they called in a welfare check, the cops came, and they found this guy in the bathroom, dead in the tub, with the shower _still running!_ It’d been going the whole fucking time! They said by the time they found him, they couldn’t tell the difference between him and the shower!”

“They…” Chris’s chair squeaked again. “Wait. Wh…what does…Conrad. What in the _fuck_ could that possibly mean?!”

“It _means_—”

“D-d-did he fucking _become_ a shower? Is that the scary part of this story?”

“No, asshole! His skin like—”

“_Became porcelain tile?!_ I’m pretty sure I could tell the difference between a spongy-ass skeleton corpse and a _shower!!!_”

“You obtuse morons are missing the point!”

Sam looked up from her book, eyes narrowed. This was really the conversation they were having, huh? This was…this was it. These were the people she had chosen to spend her precious time on Earth with.

Across from her, Ashley had paused writing to do the same. Her face was contorted with an expression caught somewhere between abject disgust and utter exasperation. “I’m not even part of the conversation and I’m done with it.”

“Yuuup,” Sam sighed. “Took the words right out of my mouth.” Her eyes slid to her phone and she tapped the screen, wondering how much of the motion was actual concern and how much was an attempt to distract herself from the awful sense of discomfort growing heavy in her chest.

She couldn’t say what had brought it on, but it was there, baby, big and bad and going bump in the night. Logically, she knew it was probably just the oh-so-wonderful combo of social anxiety and the memory of the writing in the mirror’s fog making her feel so…so…gross. On-edge, really…like she’d been watching a scary movie that had suddenly gone silent. Her muscles had coiled tight, ready to spring at a moment’s notice, her entire body telling her there was a jump-scare on the horizon, but…_why?_

She hadn’t missed any calls. The screen of her phone couldn’t offer her any more distraction, and that _sucked_ because there was no way she was going to be able to focus on _anything else_ with this stupid anxiety gremlin tip-tapping its way up her spine.

…maybe Ash could help.

She sure wasn’t about to join the _other _spirited conversation going on, that much was for damn sure.

“Hey, so, we never got around to it last time, but what’s this Canada thing you guys keep mentioning?”

Aha! The magic words! Ashley’s eyes widened for a split-second, and she chopped her hand across her throat in the universal sign for ‘Oh God oh God, please shut up, oh God oh God.’ She quickly glanced over her shoulder, saw the guys were still in the thick of their argument (“YOU CAN TELL BONES FROM A SHOWER!” “He fucking _disintegrated! _The man became _soup!_ Why don’t you get that?! The motherfucker became a goddamn _stew!_”), and heaved a sigh of relief before turning back to her. “Eesh.”

Sam blinked. Just because she was used to their bizarre antics didn’t mean she was any closer to _understanding_ them. “…everything okay? Did I like…blow your cover, or…?”

Ashley leaned in closer, rolling her eyes for good measure. “Josh doesn’t want us talking about it with…other people around.” It was magical, really, how she could say ‘other people’ and make it sound _exactly_ like ‘Conrad.’ “He’s been planning it forever, and it’s s’posed to just be an us-thing, so…” She shook her head abruptly. “That doesn’t answer your question.”

“Nope.”

“Sorry—it’s a trip we’ve been planning on doing over winter break! The Washingtons own, um…” Her lower teeth were bared in a grimace for reasons unknown; it seemed like she was deliberating over something, but…uh, Sam couldn’t even begin to guess what.

So she tried to help. “…property? A house?”

The grimace became a strange smile. “A…mountain.”

_That_ certainly wasn’t how she’d been expecting that sentence to end. Sam opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again. They. They owned a _what_, now?

“A…mountain.”

“Yeahhh.”

Though she didn’t want to catch their attention, she chanced a glance over to the guys. “Does Conrad’s family own a mountain?”

Snorting a laugh, Ash shook her head, “No. Hence why they’re always fighting like that. But, see, there’s an old abandoned sanatorium on the mountain, and we had this idea to like, go up there, do some exploring, and hopefully get a really, _really_ good episode out of it!” Her shoulders slouched slightly as she added, “Well that, and uh, probably tetanus. And lead poisoning. And, I dunno, mesothelioma.”

Holding back her laughter was quickly becoming difficult. “Mesothelioma. Like the commercials.”

“Yeah, from the like, ceiling tiles maybe.”

Oh how she hoped to sweet baby Jesus that Ash didn’t have any aspirations of being a travel agent. “Sounds like…fun…?” A second later, something else occurred to her, “Wait, when you said it’s an ‘us-thing…’”

Her eyes were hopeful when she looked up to her. Hoo boy.

“…that, uh, includes me, huh?”

“I hope so! Please don’t make me spend any part of my break alone with those dunderheads. Could you _imagine?!_” Dramatically, she pretended to shudder, “The jokes alone? I’ll be dead in a day!”

For the first time that visit, Sam let the corners of her mouth turn up. Just a little, though. Just the tiniest bit. “I dunno…if you died, the videos would probably get better.”

“Hey!”

“Not the _writing_, obviously, and I’m not saying it would be _worth it_, I’m just saying they’d improve if there was actually a, y’know, _ghost._” The discomfort in her stomach began to shift strangely; the thought of spending break with the CREEPs was, well…complicated. Ugh, but she could already hear her dad’s voice in her head urging her on, all but literally packing her bag _for_ her, rambling on and on about the healing power of friendship and all that crap. Barf. “It’s a tempting offer…”

“Oh c’mon, pleeease? It’ll be _such_ a cool episode! More urban exploration than real ghost stuff! And the mountain’s really pretty, and we could go for walks, or even hikes!”

“I dunno, Ash…I’m sure it’s cool to explore and all, but the thought of _staying_ there…”

“W—oh! No! Nonono, Sam, oh my God, _no!_ I…no.” The words bubbled out of her choked by giggles. “Oh ew. No. We’re not staying in the sanatorium! Eugh. Even Josh has standards—” Ash paused, then pensively added, “I mean, not _many_, but like, _some_.”

Her eyes were caught by a sudden movement, and when she glanced up, she was just in time to watch the guys angrily storm towards the bathroom, still shouting about melted flesh and shower tiles. Would her dad _really_ lecture her about the power of friendship if he met these weirdos?

…yeah, probably. Ugh.

“Here!” A phone was offered out to her, the screen showing a photo of a large, snowy building. “We’d be staying at his family’s lodge! I’ve only been up there once, and that was a few years ago, but it’s _super_ swanky and nice! It used to be part of a ski resort, I think? But the Washingtons shut it down and now it’s their vacation home.”

Sam idly flipped though the photos, and…aw shit, she knew she was gonna end up going. In a word, the place was gorgeous: a coil of smoke rising from the driveway, a forest of snow-capped fir trees in the background, the faintest ribbon of color in the night sky suggesting the northern lights…damn it!

She handed the phone back to her, the gears in her head whirring a million miles an hour in some attempt to figure out how to get herself over the awkward tension she’d created between them all. These weren’t exactly prime conditions for kumbayas around a campfire. “It looks nice.”

“Right? The plan’s to get enough footage to make one really crazy episode, almost more like a documentary, then we stock up on spooky B-roll, then? Then we kick back and relax in the lodge for the rest of the time! We—ooh!” There weren’t words enough in the English language to describe how psyched she was in the moment, flipping through her camera roll again. “I don’t know if I have pictures, but they have this, this, uh cinema room? It’s a whole little movie theater _in_ the lodge, and since his dad’s in the business, sometimes Josh gets advanced screeners so we can watch stuff that hasn’t come out yet!”

She laughed, feeling a tiny crumb of her anxiety fall away with the breath. “We’re not gonna have to do any ghost stuff _in_ the lodge, are we? Is _it_ haunted too?”

Ashley’s laugh came out as more of a snort. “No. Trust me, Sam. If _I_ don’t get scared in a place, no one will.” Apparently there weren’t any photos of the movie room to share. Ah well. Ash set her phone down again before setting her hands on her knees and fixing that hopeful look on Sam again. “Say you’ll at least think about it? I’ll write _such _a good script for you…”

“I’m sure you will—_would_. Whatever.”

“_Sam-uh!_ I’m being so serious, it’ll be a blast! How often do you get to stay in an empty luxury resort?”

“It _does_ sound fancy.”

“It is! It’s so fancy, in fact, that it has its own _name_. Can you believe that? Like a manor house from an old gothic novel!”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, distracted by the ruckus the guys made as they returned to the main room, the conversation _still_ apparently on the finer points of decomposition. “What’re we working with here, Manderley? Rose Red? The Overlook? Hogwarts?”

Funny, funny, right? Yeah, well, the humor of the situation died in Sam’s lungs when Ashley scoffed, and replied, calm as could be, “Blackwood!” She opened her book, searching for where she’d left off, and it was a good thing she had, because there was no way in the great blue fuck Sam could control her face just then.

Blackwood? As in…Blackwood _Pines?_ But…

The world seemed to shift into slow-mo around her. Oh no oh no oh no this couldn’t be right, this couldn’t be right _at all_. The name was a coincidence, just like _Josh’s_ name was a coincidence, because she’d _asked him_ and he’d _said_ he was an only child, so…

“—am? Hellooo…Ground Control to major Sam?”

It took way more effort than she wanted to admit to shake herself out of her own head. The air felt like syrup, like she was trying to function in a nightmare. How long had she been zoned out like that? Hell if she knew, but the others were staring at her, each face showing a different degree of concern (the endpoints being Chris and Ash, no surprise there), so she forced herself to tighten her lips into what she hoped looked _something_ like a smile.

It didn’t.

“Feelin’ okay there, Sammy?” Josh asked, voice more hesitant than she’d ever heard.

All of a sudden, it was hard to look at him—impossible, even. Her hands were moving, tucking her stuff into her backpack with the frenzied, jerky energy of someone about to puke. “Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just, uh…think I’m coming down with something.”

Ash’s forehead creased in worry, “Oh nooo! Really?”

“I’m gonna, um, head out, I think?” She felt like she’d been riding the Tilt-o-Whirl at the county fair—everything was spinning, spinning, spinning, blurring her periphery until her vision was hardly more than colored smudges.

“You want a ride?”

“Nope,” she answered, probably way too quickly, standing up onto her unsteady legs. They were noodles under the rest of her body; more specifically, they were noodles threatening to fold over into a floppy, buttery mess, sending her toppling over. “I could use the air.” The second she said it, it became _imperative_ that she get outside to fill her lungs with fresh air. Cold air. She was suffocating in the apartment, drowning in the dusty smell wafting out of the heating vents.

After checking his watch, Conrad shrugged a shoulder, “Ugh, I should be heading out too. Got a hot date tonight.”

“Doubtful.”

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

“Aw, you didn’t tell me your mom was coming over!”

She only heard their teasing distantly, like she was falling down a well they were standing over. Her feet moved one in front of the other until the next thing she knew, she was in the hallway, halfway down the stairs to the first floor, an incessant buzz in her ear.

A buzz that turned out to be none other than Conrad, talking to her about…shit, she didn’t know. And really he’d been talking _at_ her more than _to_ her, so she couldn’t feel too bad about not listening.

Something rushed up her throat from her stomach and she was positive, monstrously positive, that she was about to upchuck right onto him. She could see it happening in her brain, the whole scene flashing in vivid neon shapes, and—“Hey, so…weird question for you.” The dread finally made sense. It had been bouncing around in her head nonstop since he’d first said it, an unholy pinball smacking itself against each and every corner of her brain, and there in the stairwell, everything clicked into place.

“Lucky for you, weird questions are sort of my specialty! Right after mixing highballs and bullshitting essays.” Conrad chuckled, stride slowing enough to match her pace. “Hit me.”

She didn’t feel much like smiling…and still, she made an effort. “Earlier, you said something…uh…” Her hands moved to cup her elbows.

Something about it must’ve struck him as odd, she thought, because he stopped completely, turning to examine her face with his own eyebrows arched. He seemed wary, though only slightly, like he was trying to remember all the stupid shit he’d said during the investigation.

Fair enough. He _had_, after all, said, uh, _quite a bit _of stupid shit in the short time she’d known him.

“This is gonna sound _real_ dumb if it’s nothing, so I’m just gonna ask it anyway.” Sam heaved a sigh. “You said something to Josh about wanting to scare your sister’s boyfriend?”

“Well yeah, just as a joke, though!” His grin took a decidedly defensive kind of edge as he backpedaled. “Alex is cool and all, just kind of super, _super_ uptight, and God _help _me, sometimes it’s li—”

“No, I—no. Literally, I don’t care about that.”

Conrad’s posture relaxed. “Oh!” He laughed, then paused, watching her warily again, his forehead creasing with confusion. “Wait, what?”

“When you guys were talking about that, you said he ‘knows what it’s like?’” Her stomach squirmed unpleasantly. It felt as though it was trying to decide whether or not it wanted to tie itself into knots or explode entirely.

He continued to stare at her. When her words simply trailed off, his confusion only seemed to deepen. “Uh…okay? Did I?”

“Were you saying, like…he knows what it’s like to…” Ugh. She had to ask it. She had to come out and just _ask_. There was a lump in her throat keeping her from swallowing, and her stomach was a pit of eels, and even as she clenched them tight into the fabric of her sleeves, her fingers were ice. “I thought Josh was an only child?”

“I mean, he is…” Conrad began.

And every muscle in Sam’s body relaxed.

“…well, _now_, anyway.”

So much for relaxation.

So much for relief.

So much for…a lot of things.

Before she understood what she was doing, Sam reached over to grab Conrad’s arm, tugging him to face her more fully—and maybe to support some of her weight. Maybe. “What does that mean?” she asked, her voice cracked and caught somewhere near the back of her tongue, giving her words a strange, choked quality. “What do you mean ‘_now?’_ Like, like…” She knew she was scrambling, knew how that must’ve made her look, but…what she thought was happening _couldn’t_ be happening. It _couldn’t_. “Like his parents have _plans_ for more kids, or—”

He didn’t pull away from her, which was nice of him, considering she was absolutely acting like a crazy person, but neither did he stop staring at her like she had spontaneously burst into flame, which was less nice. “Uh, I meant his si—” Conrad froze, his bafflement melting away into shock, then suspicion, then realization, then finally…something horribly close to panic. “Oh holy shit, you don’t know about that, do you?”

Sam stared at him.

“Fffffff—okay. Okay. I think maybe I should…stop…talking…”

Her grip tightened. Only a little. Only slightly. But enough that he must’ve noticed. “Conrad.” Sam hoped she sounded calm and collected and _not_ like the spooky ghost child from a bad horror movie. “Conrad, I need you to tell me about his sisters.”

“Sam, I—wait.” Anxiously, he glanced over his shoulder towards the door of the apartment, turning back to her only once he was sure it was still closed. “How did you know I was gonna say sister_s?_”

“_Please_.”

There must’ve been _something_ in her tone that convinced him, because he sucked his teeth and rubbed at his forehead, his breath escaping him in a helpless rush that seemed to signal submission. “I probably shouldn’t…look, I’ve already…this is a _real_ dick move, and—”

“Was it a car accident?”

His posture changed in a way she wasn’t able to place. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to—that shift had been all the answer she needed.

Sam knew what came next. It was the only way she could be sure, to convince her brain of what her gut had known since the first time she’d seen the intro to their videos and Josh’s last name had appeared in bold. She had to ask, but God…oh _God_. “Were they _twins?_”

Conrad _did_ pull away from her then; slowly, yes, but deliberately. “S-so what’s the deal?” he asked, clearly trying to figure out what the fuck was happening, every inch as lost, as terrified as she was. “Do you know the story or _not?_ Make up your mind!”

Sam took a step back. Then two. Then three. Then she made a beeline down the stairwell, letting her feet carry her down the last few steps and through the hall. She pushed past them all without hearing a _word _anyone said, stepping out into the chilly evening air with her coat unzipped and her bag hanging from one shoulder, legs moving and moving and moving until she made it all the way to front campus. That was when her autopilot cut off, her fight-or-flight draining away into a bone-deep exhaustion that felt more like the flu than grief.

She sat down on a bench and clutched her phone in her hands, eyes wide and dry and unseeing as she stared at the concrete underneath her feet. She sat there and she stayed there for…okay, she didn’t know _how_ long, waiting for the texts to come flooding in, waiting for the questions, waiting for the CREEPs to ask her what had happened with Conrad, or where she was, or if she was okay…

But it seemed Conrad hadn’t made a point to tell the others about their uncomfortable conversation, because no such texts came. Her phone was a cold brick in her hands, not buzzing or ringing or flashing or anything. No one texted. No one called. No one asked how she knew Hannah and Beth. No one asked how she already knew they were dead.

Most importantly, though, and maybe worst of all, no one asked about what was on her phone.

She needed to think. She needed to cry. She needed to breathe. She needed to go home.

She never should’ve clicked on that stupid fucking ad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, not to get too serious, but with all these quarantines and shut-downs and people having to isolate because of COVID-19, please stay safe <3 I hope you and yours stay healthy and well <3 Stay strong out there!!


	13. An invisible (wo)man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes an admission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, fair warning, there's discussions of a fatal car accident in this one - no gruesome details, I promise, but we've got some death talk going on, so just be aware if car wrecks are something that upset you!

Having done all of her (pointless, boring, downright _shitty_) core classes back at her old school, Sam had never actually set foot in the psych building before. She hadn’t had a _reason_ to. So when she pushed open the main doors and walked into the first floor hallway, she found herself _immediately_ lost; instead of just a straight shot as she’d expected, the floor branched and trailed off into a bunch of little side-corridors, making her think humorlessly of a maze.

Ugh.

Psychologist jokes.

Feeling wildly out of place in the quiet building, she slowly began wandering. Whenever she came to a fork in the path, she’d casually pop her head into the adjoining hall, glancing around before pulling back. Lecture hall, lecture hall, vending machine, classroom, office with a copy machine, classroom, classroom, classroom…

When one of her exploratory checks brought her to a group of softly chattering students, she quickly brought her phone up to her face, acting as though she’d gotten an important text so she could retreat before anyone really noticed her. What she was _actually_ doing was pulling up the department’s webpage again, scrolling madly as she looked for the clinic’s room number.

‘**Psychological Health Clinic**,’ the site proclaimed in large, bold letters, ‘**Located on the 1st floor of the Cathcart (Psychology) building.**’ It had a photo too, though it was of the _interior_ of the office, not the exterior, which…didn’t really help her. At all.

Of course.

Why _would_ it, right? Why?

Still, she kept her phone in her hand as she walked, anxiously tapping it with her thumb whenever the screen began to dim.

A class let out, a torrent of students appearing from around a bend, talking to one another in low voices, shoes squeaking on the tile. For a second, she considered getting someone’s attention, asking one of them instead of aimlessly walking around…but when she lifted her eyes from her phone, she was startled to see a sign hanging just before the next turn in the hall: **Clinic ****->**

Well that solved one problem.

The door was surprisingly heavy when she pulled it open, catching her off guard almost to the point of stumbling back. The reason for it was clear the second it fell shut behind her—the interior office was all but perfectly soundproof, the stillness pressing down on her eardrums as though she’d plunged herself into the deep end of a pool.

Yuck. The place had _serious_ doctor’s office vibes. Everything was white (except for the things that were grey), a low table in the middle of the room loaded with a handful of some campus newsletter instead of magazines, and sweet Jesus above, it smelled like they washed the walls in Clorox every morning. Some tiny part of her brain regressed to that childhood association of white walls and booster shots and she shuddered.

At the front desk, a young woman with her hair tied back in a severe bun was scribbling something into a notebook, chin resting in her hand. When the door clicked shut, her eyes flicked to Sam briefly…and then went back to whatever she was writing. Whether that was rudeness or some concerted effort to lessen people’s anxiety about being there, she didn’t know, and quite frankly, didn’t really _care_. Sam approached the desk and cleared her throat softly, asking, “Hi, um, do you guys take walk-ins? The site didn’t say…”

The girl finished writing with a flourish, gaze moving to the computer next to her. She typed something with a few quick pecks of her fingers, and then, finally, she met Sam’s eyes with a perfunctory little smile. “We do—can you give me your name and student ID number to get you registered?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” She ratted through the information, having to pull her ID out of her pocket to get the last three digits right. This wasn’t something she’d done before, but she thought she knew what to expect: there’d be some paperwork, maybe her ID card would need to be scanned, she’d have to come back in an hour or two to get seen…

“Oh! Look at that, you’re right on time. You can go on back.”

…wait.

What?

Blinking, she looked to the girl behind the desk, figuring she must’ve misheard her. “Right on time?”

“Mhm,” she hummed, clicking something as she spoke. “He’s expecting you, so—”

“That can’t…” Sam narrowed her eyes as though it would help her make sense of it. It did not. “Sorry, I just…I don’t _have_ an appointment. I’m…a walk-in? Like I said?” Her voice took a hard turn upwards, forming a question where she hadn’t intended one. The girl just stared at her. “You might have me mixed up with someone e—”

“You said ‘Samantha Giddings,’ right? G-I-D-D-I-N-G-S?”

“Yeah…?”

“And _this_ is you?” She turned the monitor of the computer enough for her to see…herself.

On the screen was a form. A form with _all_ of her information already filled out. Her student photo. Her class schedule. Her GPA, transfer status, bursar status…and there, at the bottom, the words a dark, underlined hyperlink, ‘11:30am – AJ HILL.’

Her ears popped, and suddenly the office didn’t seem so quiet. She could hear the hum of a heater, a water cooler burbling out of view, the electronic buzz of the monitor, her own breathing, _everything_.

“Hill?” she asked, the name creating a small cataclysm in her gut. Hill, as in _Alan?_ Alan Hill, the husband of Edgar the spooky libraria…library curator? Alan Hill, _Josh’s therapist?_

The girl shrugged. “Yeah, guess so. Which is weird, cuz normally Dr. Hill only takes referrals, but…” she sniffed, flapping a hand in the universal sign for ‘What can you do?’, “There you are. You can go on back, like I said. His name’s on the door, you can’t miss it.” And just like that, she was dismissed, the girl going back to her notebook.

Sam watched her for a second longer…and then slowly, _hesitantly_, turned to find the right office door. She passed a few of them, most closed but some ajar, soft voices murmuring soothingly from inside the walls.

Hill’s door was, unsurprisingly, the last. While the others had been to either side of her, lining the narrow corridor, his was situated at the very end, punctuating the hall with a gleaming brass nameplate.

‘Alan J. Hill, PhD, MD – Clinical Advisor, Therapist’

She glanced over her shoulder. Then she knocked, rapping her knuckles against the door with barely enough force to make a sound. Some part of her kind of hoped he wouldn’t answer. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t knock again. No, she’d turn around without so much as looking at the front desk, and she’d hustle her ass back to the dorm to pretend like this never happened.

But the door opened.

Because why wouldn’t it.

What she had expected was another version of Edgar—some broad, strangely solid man with a pocket watch chain leading from his breast pocket to some mysterious hidden slit in his waistcoat, eyes full of some ancient, horrific knowledge of life and death and every mistake she’d ever made, all coalescing into a superhuman sense of omniscient judgment.

The man she found herself face-to-face with was none of those things.

Alan was…grey. It was hard for her to get over that initial impression, try as she might; so much of him was simply _grey_. His sweater vest, his pants, his eyes. Even his hair, _mostly_ brown, had begun to show telltale streaks of grey creeping up as his hairline made the inevitable creep _back_. His face was round in a doughy way, suggesting the very real possibility of future jowls if ever his weight fluctuated too greatly. The dress shirt under his sweater hung a bit loose, the sleeves rumpled almost (but not quite) to the point of wrinkles. And though there _was_, she saw, a deep sense of knowing in his gaze, it was a warm, grandfatherly sort of sensation.

Just as she had with Edgar, Sam felt herself frozen to the spot. He had a hell of a lot of presence, Dr. Alan J. Hill, that much was for damn sure.

“Samantha?”

“Sam.” The response was automatic. “I, um, I’m not sure I should be here. The girl up front said I had an appointment, but I _didn’t_, and I’d hate to take up someone else’s time if there’s been a mistake.”

Alan looked at her for a beat—but no, it was more than that. He was, what, _reading_ her? The verb didn’t make sense despite feeling right, and man oh man, she could _absolutely_ see Josh talking with this guy. Sure his edge wasn’t as obvious as his other half’s had been, but woof. Dude was throwing out some serious Hannibal Lecter vibes with that look.

And then the expression was gone and the smile took its place once more. “Not at all! Please come in.”

It was only _after_ she walked into his office that her brain processed the odd shape of his words. Well, he definitely wasn’t British…but neither was he anything she could immediately recognize. She didn’t think she’d _ever_ heard an accent like his before.

“So…what brings you to our little corner of the building today, Sam?” Alan lazily made his way behind a large mahogany desk. He didn’t sit immediately, instead resting his palms on the tabletop, leaning his weight against it. Over his head hung one of the most ghastly, awful paintings Sam had ever had the misfortune of seeing. Did people actually…feel comfortable looking at that thing? It seemed a poor choice for a goddamn psychologist’s office.

She turned away from the heat of his eyes, pretending the terrible scene framed behind him had nothing to do with it. Josh _had_ mentioned something about his gruesome art collection, so…at least it checked out. She was definitely talking to _the_ Dr. Hill. “Uh…it’s…a long story.”

Chuckling, Alan settled himself into his chair. He spread his hands wide, “Well, I can assure you, I am more than accustomed to long stories.” One of his hands waved her towards the rest of the office, presumably encouraging her to sit.

She wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to, though. Her lips tightened in a nervous smile while she tried to decide between her options. “I’m sorry, I really haven’t…done this before.” There was a couch against one wall, seemingly made of some dark leather. Did people really _use_ those in therapy? Did they throw themselves over them dramatically, maybe with one arm slung across their faces? Eh…not for her.

“Are you referring to visiting the clinic?” Alan asked, his eyes tracking her slow progress through the dimly lit office. “Or talking to someone like me?”

What she wanted to say was that she’d definitely never even _met_ anyone quote-unquote _like him_, but that felt more like something _Josh _would say. She wouldn’t have been able to deliver it without sounding rude. “Both,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest as she came to the beanbag. That _also_ felt wrong, though for decidedly different reasons. She wasn’t _five_, and this wasn’t a slumber party. No-go on that one.

“Hmm…allow me to put your uncertainties to rest—there’s no wrong way to go about it! Save for not talking at all, of course.” The last part was spoken under his breath, riding on the air of a sigh, as though he was saying it more to himself. “Is there something in particular that’s been troubling you, Sam? Or is it a more general concern you have? We see plenty of students for anxiety and depression…even homesickness!” He did the same thing Josh did, she realized—repeating her name while he spoke to her. At least now she knew where he got _that _particular tic.

The chair in front of the desk was the only choice that seemed right. Her fingers brushed the arm of it. No sign of the gross, waxy buildup so much of the wooden furniture on campus had…she was struck by the suspicion that Alan was something of a stickler when it came to the upkeep of his…lair? Did this count as a lair? It sure felt like a lair. Sam sat herself in front of the desk, crossing her ankles, hugging her phone against the crook of her arm.

Alan waited. He didn’t say a word. He just sat before her, watching curiously while she acclimated herself to the office. That much made sense, too…most people he saw in a day were probably fairly nervous to be there.

“I’m…having a problem. And I don’t know what to do about it.” The words were thick on her tongue. “It’s weird, and it’s complicated, and honestly, I-I don’t even know where to start.” She laughed but the sound that came out of her didn’t sound very much like any laugh she’d ever heard.

“Usually,” there was a creak from the chair as Alan leaned forward, “I find it helps to start at the beginning.” His smile seemed to suggest the two of them had just shared a secret joke.

The beginning, huh? The beginning.

“I’ll probably end up going back and forth,” she warned him. “Sometimes it gets messy…”

“Life, Sam, is _always_ messy. It would be terribly uninteresting, otherwise.”

Something about the calmness with which he said it startled her. Again, she fought against the impossible notion that he already knew her story, her worries, her _life_, maybe even better than she did. “About…a year ago, give or take, um…I was going to another school, and I…” she swallowed hard against a gelatinous lump that had begun to grow in her throat, “I lost two friends in an accident.”

There was a low sound on Alan’s part, striking her as somehow simultaneously sympathetic…and maybe just a little performative. She was probably reading way too deeply into it, trying to find faults where there weren’t any—all at once, she was awash with every iota of that old dread and guilt and agony, sending her bobbing in the icy waters of regret.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t _do_ this! Why had she thought she could dredge any of this back up to the surface after spending the past year tamping it further and further down? She’d left a _school_ for this. She’d stopped talking to old friends for this. She’d run and run and _run_ from this, and for what? So she could barf it out on this weird old guy who, not for nothing, already probably knew the story beat by beat?

Maybe it would’ve been different if it hadn’t been Alan. If it hadn’t been _him_, then sure, maybe she could’ve told her sad tale without the added terror of recognition. It could’ve been anonymous (mostly). There could’ve been _distance_ between the memories and the present.

But there she was, sitting across from Dr. Alan J. Hill, just another living, breathing link connecting her to those ghosts of her past, to the Washingtons, to _Josh_, and God, she was getting tired of the bizarre twists and turns that kept wrenching them closer and closer together…

“Sam?”

How had she thought the tone of his voice performative before? The concern of it, the sheer _sympathy_, was so strong that it shook her out of her own head. “Um…” she mumbled, trying to fill her self-imposed silence. “Sorry.”

Alan’s forehead wrinkled as he frowned, two deep lines that almost resembled a flickering wi-fi signal. “No apologies necessary. _I’m_ the one who’s sorry—that must’ve been quite a loss. The death of a loved one is always a painful thing…but to lose _two_, especially at your age? Hardly seems fair.”

Her lips tightened into something masquerading as a smile. What did a person say to that? She shrugged.

“Would you like to talk about that loss, Sam?”

No.

Yes.

“It’s…only part of my problem.” That wasn’t an answer, not _really_, but it was what she had. “I guess, um…I guess I kind of…_have to_, though, for the rest to…make sense.” Already she found herself uncomfortably aware of the box of tissues on the desk. How long before she was reaching for those, she wondered?

Probably not too long.

She took another long breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and tightened her clammy grip on her phone. “I had these friends back at my old school. We met freshman year at one of those big orientation things, y’know? Where they show you around campus and tell you how to use your meal plan. They were sisters—twins, actually, but they didn’t really look _too_ much like each other, so you didn’t know that unless they told you…”

Was that recognition in Alan’s face? Or was she just seeing shadows? Sam forced herself to look away from him, turning her gaze instead to the terrible painting over his head. She didn’t really want to look at the awful, hellish scene it depicted, yet she _knew_ if she didn’t, she’d constantly be searching Alan’s expression for…well, whatever she was expecting to find there.

“We just got along right away. Lots of stuff in common I guess. So we hung out. All the time. My family’s from out of state though, so it was really only during the school year. We…we talked online and texted, all that,” she added quickly, unsure whether words would—_could_—be enough for her to explain how close she and the twins had been. It all sounded so shallow and childish coming out of her mouth. “Which I only even bring up because, like…” Deep breath. “I never met their family or anything. I knew the basic stuff about them, parents still together, older brother, that kinda crap, but I mean…that’s not what we _talked_ about. Their parents never visited, mine never visited, it wasn’t…it wasn’t a _thing_, if that makes sense? It wasn’t important. Not then.”

There was something nauseating about trying to sum up two years of friendship in a few sentences. It felt distasteful, like hand-waving the events of a major war, or filling the gaps of a love story with ‘blah blah blah.’ How could she _ever_ capture the feeling of stifling laughter in the library’s computer lab when waiting for the printer, or running out in the snow at three in the morning to get a breakfast sandwich during finals, or sharing a locker at the campus gym so they only had to buy one combination lock, or, or, or…?

Now that it was out of her mouth, though, now that she was actually _saying it_ to another living, breathing human person, she couldn’t help feeling like an idiot. The twins had made it _abundantly_ clear that there had been some, uh, _tension_ between them and their parents—something about their mom being way too absorbed with her clients and their dad working impossible hours—so she’d just never pried. And yeah, they’d _talked_ about having a brother, but it never went too far past eye rolls and embarrassing stories from when they were kids…had it?

Had she just not been paying enough attention? Had she not cared enough? She could remember about a hundred thousand late-night talks, but all of those memories seemed to involve the guy Hannah had been crushing on, or the weird TA she and Beth had to deal with in their Enviro Lab (the one who always wore bolo ties and drank out of a mug that read ‘Foxy Uncle’ in lime green Comic Sans), or what had happened on the most recent episode of _Grey’s Anatomy, _or if anyone else had noticed the weirdo that seemed to always hang around the exercise bikes in the gym. In all those conversations, had they _ever_ said anything about their dad being _famous?_ Probably not, right? That probably would’ve stuck out in her mind.

She was zoning out again. Sam cleared her throat, still painfully aware of Alan watching her. “But.” And here was where it got really, really sticky. “Right before winter break last year, um…” The air in her lungs turned into taffy, coating her throat with a goopy layer of grief, threatening to choke her before she could force the words out. “It was…” Her hand gripped her phone harder. “It was bad.”

He nodded but didn’t press her. He simply sat there, hands patiently folded in front of him.

“They had this…whole plan. They were going to spend some time at this lodge their family owned—_owns_.” Oh, Blackwood Pines was absolutely still the Washingtons’ property. Ashley had told her that much. “They invited me, but my dad was coming to pick me up for break a couple days _after_ they were supposed to leave, so…I…didn’t.” She swallowed hard against the gelatinous blockage in her windpipe. “It was a really long drive, like, hours and hours away, so it wouldn’t have made sense for me to go.

Had the twins said anything about who else was going to be at the lodge? _Had_ they? She wracked her brain for _any_ flimsy memory of the invite. If she had gone with them, if things had turned out differently, what were the chances the three of them would’ve arrived only to have the door opened by Chris? Or Ash? Or way more likely, _Josh?_ Would she have spent her winter break rolling her eyes at their camera setups? Would she and the twins have clamped their hands over their ears to avoid the endless screaming of the spirit box?

How close had she come to meeting the CREEPs last year?

The building’s heating system must’ve kicked on just then, because a draft of air slid its way past her, ruffling her hair and sending a shiver across her skin. It brought a fingertip of dread with it, skating gently down her spine—it also brought a brutal follow-up question.

How close had she come to being one of the CREEPs’ _ghost stories_ last year?

“I guess the road gets, um, rough near the lodge. It’s on a mountain, so there are…I dunno, twists, and stuff. And they’d been driving for a long time by then, so they were probably tired, and, uh…” She just kept shrugging. It wasn’t an intentional thing, and probably that was enough body language to tell Alan _something_ about her, but her shoulders kept reflexively moving in and up, in and up, almost as if that would be enough of a shield to protect her from how the story inevitably ended.

“They hit a patch of ice or something. Beth, uh…she died on impact.” Which was a ‘nice’ way of phrasing it, really. There was more that she knew, of course, nasty little details about how she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt, details about what had happened _because _of that, but Alan didn’t need her to say all that. Not when she suspected he already knew.

Still…and fair enough, it could’ve been her imagination…but Sam thought she saw him wince.

“Hannah…didn’t.” She had to stop then, if only for a second. She rubbed at her face in some vain attempt at getting her sinuses to stop prickling so badly. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. But she kept trying. _Those_ details she wouldn’t let herself think about, not even for a second. Couldn’t do it. “She was really, really hurt, and probably really, really confused, and…”

That much had to be true, right? It had to be. After everything that came out afterwards, it must’ve been. She must’ve hit her head or _something_, because her first move should’ve been to call for help. It _should’ve_ been a call to emergency services. It should’ve been something—_anything_—other than what she’d _actually_ done.

“She called me.” Her voice broke and she knew she was done for. “She _called _me. I don’t know why _me_—maybe I was the last number she had on her call list, maybe she had our text up when it happened, I don’t _know_, but she _called me_.” Sam tried to swallow it back and couldn’t. She grabbed for a tissue before Alan could hand her one, her movements jerky and rough with…what? Agitation? Embarrassment? Anger? Maybe. “I had _just_ gotten to the gym, so…” There was the bitterness she’d tried to avoid, loud and clear. “So. My phone was in a locker. And I was just…climbing. Or running. I’m not even _sure_, and like…who _forgets_ that? Who forgets what they were doing when their best friends _died?_” It was punctuated by a harsh cough of a laugh as she mopped at her face with the tissue. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know she was calling—”

“You couldn’t have.” It was Alan’s first interruption, spoken in a low, commiserative tone.

“That doesn’t make it _better_.” She hadn’t exactly snapped it, but it had been close enough that some rational part of her cringed and bristled, knowing she’d replay that moment of rudeness over and over again while trying to fall asleep that night. “By the time I was done working out and saw her calls, it…maybe it was too late, maybe it wasn’t, I don’t _know_. I just don’t _know_. She’d called twice. And I had two messages. I thought it…I thought probably she just…” Her breath hitched and she had to stop, covering her face with her hand. Her eyes stung with runny mascara. Why had she fucking put makeup on today?!

The truth of the matter was she’d thought the twins had been playing with her. It was probably some kind of joke. A bad one, obviously, but a joke. Or something _like_ a joke.

The first message had only lasted a few seconds, and the sounds had been so distant, so muffled and distorted, that even after plugging her other ear and focusing as hard as she was able, Sam had figured it was a butt-dial. She’d listened to it thousands of times since, and that was all she’d ever gotten: twenty-one seconds of rustling noises and some higher sound that might’ve been liquid dripping, might’ve been pieces of shattered windshield dropping down like gruesome confetti. Then _click!_ Nothing.

Nothing.

Alan’s silence had its own presence in the room, solid as the heat coming off a grated fireplace; it was almost as though some third person sat on the desk between them, a sentient wall of emotion. It seemed to waver when he leaned forward…though it didn’t dissipate. “Did she say anything to you, Sam?”

She started to speak…until her voice caught in her throat and she let out a mortifying little sound, some horrendously childish mix of a yelp and a sob. That time, Alan beat her to the punch—she grabbed the tissue he offered. Her phone pressed into the palm of her other hand until she felt an imprint forming under the home button.

The first message had sounded like a butt-dial.

The second message had not.

Alan waited. She thought he’d wait for _hours_, if need be. After all, she’d reached a part of the story he hadn’t heard yet. Who could resist?

The second message had started the same as the first, the noises cottony and nonsensical. Her brain had done the dirty work of filling in the gaps, turning a click into a desperate breath, a rustle into the settling of a body in a seat…but then, right around the sixteen-second mark, a voice could be heard, familiar though strained, soft and slurred and _fading_.

“‘Where are you?’” Sam said through a painful hiccup. “She just kept asking me ‘Where are you?’ And then the line went dead.” She hung her head, chest clenched like a fist. “I tried calling back. A few times. But her phone said she was out of the service area. So I figured they were just…too deep in the mountains to get the call.”

He gave her time enough to collect herself, just sitting there with his hands folded on his desk, lips slowly and silently grinding against his teeth as he ostensibly pieced everything together. “Well, that certainly is a _lot_ for one person to live with, isn’t it?”

If he was looking for a response, he was SOL; Sam sniffled hard and cast her eyes down to her phone, turning it over between her fingers endlessly, no doubt smudging the screen to hell and back in the process.

“Let me…let me ask you this, Sam.” Alan leaned a bit more of his weight onto his elbows, the base of his chair creaking as if to object. “What is it that you think you could’ve done, had you been able to answer your phone?” His face remained almost entirely impassive, but she had the strangest sense of _knowing_ that this was a conversation he’d had before. Maybe not exactly the same, maybe the finer points had been switched around a little, but whether it was her imagination or something she was actually hearing, the question sounded too well practiced. “Clearly you think you could’ve done _something_—” he gestured vaguely towards the hand clutching her phone, “—what would that’ve been?”

That time she _did_ have an answer at the ready. “I could’ve called 9-1-1. I could’ve gotten some kind of _help_ out there.” How many times had she played _that_ scenario out in her head? Too many. Way too many to count. The phone would ring just as she was about to shut her gym locker, she’d see it was Hannah calling, she’d answer, hear something was wrong, and then hurriedly call emergency services before trying to get Hannah back on the line and keep her company, keep her talking, keep her from being alone and scared and—

“And where were they when the accident happened?”

She frowned, looking up towards him through the clumpy mess her mascara had made of her eyelashes. “On the road to their family’s lodge.”

He nodded slowly, “Which road would that be?”

“It—” Sam felt the lines of her face go lax with confusion as she realized…she didn’t know. “It was, um…it was in Alberta.” But even as it came out of her mouth, she saw what he was getting at: she didn’t actually know. It probably hadn’t been a highway or a main thoroughfare because no one had noticed until it was way, way too late to help, but…had it been a side street? Were they going east or west? She didn’t…she didn’t know. “Oh,” she said after a long moment, hating how very small her voice sounded in her own ears, “Oh.”

“When we experience loss, Sam, or trauma, we have a tendency to hold ourselves responsible for each little thing—all those terrible shoulds, coulds, and woulds, you know—when in reality…” He opened his hands up on his desk, “We forget that in that moment, in that space of time we were living in, we had done everything we could with the information we had. Yes, perhaps if you hadn’t missed the call, you _might_ have been able to call 9-1-1 and tell them your friends had been in an accident _somewhere_ on the way to their family lodge in Alberta, but…perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to understand or hear what Hannah was saying to you. Perhaps you would’ve thought you had a bad connection because they were too deep into the mountains and so you hung up. We can’t dwell on ‘perhaps,’ Sam—_you_ can’t dwell on it. The thing about the past is that it’s precisely that…the past. And it’s beyond our control, whether we like it or not.”

“I think they’re haunting me.”

It had been a nice monologue on his part, sure, but the words bubbled out of her before she could bite them back, spilling out into the room like water bursting out of a dam. That seemed to take _both_ of them by surprise, Sam sitting up straighter in the chair in front of the desk, Alan’s eyebrows shooting upwards quickly enough that she thought they might fly off into the stratosphere.

There was that sense of familiarity again, a look settling into his eyes that made her wonder whether once upon a time someone _else_ had sat in this very chair and sputtered out those very words in this very office after telling him that very story. Sam was hardly a mind-reader, but she had a feeling that if she had been, the only thought bouncing around Alan’s head at that moment was something along the lines of: _Ah, yes, you _are_ one of Josh’s friends, aren’t you? I had my doubts at first, and yet, here we are._

“Guilt can feel like that.” Credit where credit was due, he bounced back from the shock remarkably fast, his calm demeanor firmly in place once more. “It can make us feel as though we’re being followed by—”

“Um…I…kind of meant it in a more…literal sense.” Sam swallowed hard, every word making her feel like a bigger fool than the last; she had to keep reminding herself that this was _Josh’s_ therapist, and he’d probably heard much, much stranger due to that simple fact. “I know how that sounds,” she added, “Really, I _do_, and if _I_ heard myself say that even a few months ago, I think I’d lock myself up in a padded room, but uh…” Her mind flashed to the welts left across her chest, the perfect impression of a seatbelt; the handful of coins landing on their sides; the stupid application page freezing up until she hit submit; the horrible, accusatory message written in the fog of the bathroom mirror. ‘_where are you_,_’ _it had asked, the same question she’d heard in all of her worst nightmares, ‘_where _are_ you?_’ “That’s…that a big part of my problem, too. The, um…the haunting.”

She’d taken a lot of English classes in her time, and she’d had to read a lot of novels for said classes, so she wasn’t exactly a stranger to the concept of someone eying someone else warily. This was, however, the first time she’d ever seen that particular expression in action, and oh boy, it was _not_ a great feeling. Alan regarded her carefully, as one might regard the tin of biscuit dough they were opening, trying to anticipate when it might pop so the resulting explosion didn’t startle the everloving shit out of them. “You think they’re haunting you because you didn’t help them?” he asked, taking it all in stride. “You think they’re angry you didn’t answer their call for help?”

“I mean…there’s that.” She steeled herself as she added, “And uh…probably also because I kissed their brother.”

Alan’s eyes narrowed. Only a little. Only a bit. But she noticed, all right. Oh…she noticed.

“We might kind of be dating? I’m not…I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think they’re too psyched about…that.”

When she looked up to him that time, Alan was rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand, brow furrowed in what was either deep thought or abject confusion. “All right,” he said slowly, “Let’s…” He glanced to his watch briefly, “Let’s unpack _that_, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, I'm just gonna keep saying it until all this madness with COVID calms down - I hope you and yours are all staying safe and healthy during this time <3 Hang in there! I'm gonna try and keep the words a'flowin' for those of you who are (like me) stuck at home without much to do <3 
> 
> We're all in this together!!


	14. Sleeping in your bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Josh have a conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I know it's been a GRIP since this updated, but I promise I haven't forgotten about the CREEPs! 
> 
> But speaking of forgetting...puh-LEASE go check out this SICK-ASS art fudgeroach did of "possessed" Ash - I am a fool who CONTINUES(!!!!!) to forget to link it to this story and askdfjsldkfj you NEED to check it out, omg, I can't stop looking at it. ( https://fudgeroach.tumblr.com/post/610966982262685696/possessed-ashley-from-queenofbaws-fic-who )

There was no way she managed to pull better than a C on her Econ final. No way in hell. Maybe if the curve was particularly kind, or the teacher’s assistant got especially sloppy in her grading, then a C+ _could’ve_ been in the cards, but oh, that didn’t feel likely. Her GPA wouldn’t tank if that were the case, but ugh. Just…_ugh_.

Part of her had considered asking her professors if she could get an extension or, or, or _something_ after she’d had that appointment with Dr. Hill and all the nasty memories of last year had been stirred up to float on the surface of her mind like dead fish, and yet she hadn’t. Partly that had been because she’d doubted an extra few days would’ve mattered, but _mostly _it had been borne out of a desire to not be ‘that student—’ the one that waited until the day before a test to whip out one of the classics: my grandmother died, my aunt’s in the hospital, I’m dealing with some sort of emotional whiplash after telling a spooky old Swedish man about my friends’ horrific accidental deaths…

You know.

The usual.

She reached up and raked her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her face before letting it fall back into place. At least she was done for the semester. If there was _any_ silver lining, it was most definitely that; now she could just work on getting rid of her old notes, cleaning up her desktop a little bit, and uh, probably spend some time figuring out how to handle the whole Blackwood Pines—

“Shit.” Had she actually said that out loud? Well she must’ve, because Josh promptly turned to look at her, leaving whatever he’d been doodling on the whiteboard outside her door pathetically half-finished. Then, louder, “I meant hi.” She crossed the rest of the hall to get to her door before she paused again, eyes narrowing slightly. “Wait, no, I _really_ meant how did you get in here?”

“Big dramatic thing.” Josh capped the dry erase marker as he talked, “Whole ordeal—doors were locked, obviously, and since I don’t have a keycard I had to MacGyver my way in. I remembered seeing on tv that all you need for a mini-flamethrower is some spray deodorant and a lighter, so—”

Her hands tangled up in the loose straps of her backpack. She raised her eyebrows in what she hoped (oh _God_, she _hoped_) was a convincing enough feint. Suddenly she was very dizzy, the world behind her eyes flip-flopping in all sorts of unpleasant ways: one second she was in Hill’s office clutching a snotty tissue to her face, then in front of her own computer trying fruitlessly to close her internet browser, then in CREEP HQ staring down at a handful of change, then in the gym staring at a screen that read ‘Hannah – 2 Missed Calls,’ then back in the hallway outside her dorm watching Josh pantomime his own attempt at being casual.

“Josh…” This was not how she’d imagined the rest of her day going.

But he was still talking, either not having heard her or just pretending he hadn’t. It was always hard to tell with him. “—so that’s how I got into the lobby. But if you want to know how I got up _here_ more specifically, that’s a different kettle of fish.”

“_Josh_.”

“No, no, that’s fine, I get it. Let there be some mystery. That’s how all the best stories go.” He sort-of-kind-of laughed as he said it, and she bought it about as much as she bought any of his bullshit, which was to say not even a little.

The way his voice had trailed off told her he expected her to say something, _do_ something, but the only thing she found herself capable of in that very moment was to stare at him. That was it. That was what she had in her. And she tried to control her face, really she did, and even then she knew her forehead was creasing and her eyebrows were furrowing and the corners of her mouth were turning down with the weight of a hundred thousand questions and—

Fuck it.

_Fuck it_.

They were going to have to do this sooner or later anyway. Might as well get it over with and rip the Band-Aid off.

“—wanted to stop by and just check that you were okay,” he was saying, “I’m, uh, still not _totally_ clear on what happened the other night, but you seemed pretty freaked out, and honestly kinda…mad, maybe? And you’ve been pretttttty radio silent on the texting front, so I wanted to apologize too, I guess, because clearly whatever happened—”

Before he could continue rambling, Sam grabbed the front of Josh’s hoodie, yanking him unceremoniously into her dorm.

“Uh…?” It was a struggle for all of a second, given their sheer difference in size, but Josh seemed to realize what was happening quickly enough, letting himself be led. “I mean…not _exactly_ the sort of ‘apology’ I had been thinking of, but hey, who am I to spurn a lady’s advances?” He chuckled right up until the moment Sam turned back around from shutting the door. Then he saw the look on her face. _Then_ he stopped. “Fuck. That was a joke. I promise that was a jo—”

“We need to talk about something.” Just jump headfirst into the deep end. It was going to be hard, it was going to be uncomfortable, it was going to _suck_…and it was the only way she could fathom tackling the subject.

Josh went uncharacteristically somber, arms folded across his chest as he watched her begin to pace. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

And _God_, this wasn’t how she’d wanted to do this—she hadn’t wanted to do it _at all_. It was obvious he was expecting her to yell again, to be furious; he had no idea what she was about to do, how _brutally_ she was about to ruin his day. Hell, _week_. Month? Year? Shit! She didn’t know!

Sam mentally grabbed hold of herself, whirling to face him after giving up her anxious walking. “Why did you tell me you were an only child?”

Right in front of her eyes, the concerned look on Josh’s face morphed into something she hadn’t seen before. Something that felt suspiciously like anger. It was in that moment that she realized she’d come to expect face-journeys from Chris and Ashley, but when it came to Josh, she wasn’t sure she’d seen much of _anything_ in the way of emotion—nothing outside of wry amusement or concentration. And so in the blink of an eye, he might as well have been a stranger to her again, some rando she passed a thousand times on campus. There was nothing familiar in his face then, certainly no hint of his usual grin, and there was such a flatness to his gaze that she somehow found it difficult to picture what that grin had ever looked like. “I never said that.”

Not the answer she’d expected, which was, in itself, expected. Josh was always _full_ of surprises.

“You told me you didn’t have siblings!”

“And I don’t.”

“Most people would _assume_ that means you’re an only child!”

“Why does any of that _matter_, Sam? You in the business of background checks now, or—”

It took a few responses for her to realize the edge in his voice wasn’t anger after all.

It was _fear_.

She didn’t realize her hands were knotting themselves into her hair until she tugged a bit too hard. In a distracted sort of way she noticed the weight on her back, giving her shoulders a brief shimmy until her pack dropped to the ground near her desk. “I should’ve known…” she muttered, more to herself than to him, “I should’ve _known_ when I saw your name, but I told myself it was _stupid_ because a lot of people have that name too…and yeah, we have mutual friends on Facebook, but _surprise!_ It’s 2019 and _everyone’s_ friends with _everyone_ on Facebook! But _God_, when Ash said your family’s vacation house was _Blackwood…_”

“Sam.” Josh watched her as she began pacing again. For all intents and purposes, he looked like one of those grim, creepy paintings—the sort with the eyes that followed you no matter where you stood, the kind she figured Alan probably decorated his and Edgar’s living room with. “What the _fuck_ are you talking about?”

She turned to him again, hands curled so tightly into fists that she could feel her pulse ticking away against her fingernails. “Why didn’t you ever even _mention_ Hannah and Beth?!”

It had all the effect of a record screech.

He said nothing. He didn’t move. The room went eerily still around them, perfectly quiet save for the muted buzz of others talking out in the hall.

Josh’s nostrils flared as he let out a breath made it sound (to her, at least) like he was on the verge of full-blown fight-or-flight panic. “And just who in the fuck told _you_ about them?”

Sam jerked her arms upward to press her fingers into her temples. Hard. “Josh…”

“Was it Ash?”

“Josh.”

“I _know_ it wasn’t Chris, so—” His voice cut out mid-vowel sound, his face freezing in a mask of horrified understanding. Combined, the scene felt like a frame cut from one of their videos; it seemed like if she listened hard enough, she might’ve heard Chris clicking away to try and edit a skeletal face into the background for the audience to ooh and ahh over. “Fucking. _Conrad_. I should’ve fucking known—”

“Josh,” she said, dropping her hands from her face. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do with her arms. Everything felt wrong. At least when she’d been sitting in Hill’s office, she’d been able to hunch herself down low into her chair. Here, everything just felt…vulnerable. Open. Swallowing hard around the dryness in her throat, she pushed out the only explanation she had. “I’m Sam.”

“Yeah, thanks, hi, nice to meet you. I’m—”

“_No_.” It only took two steps to cross the distance between them. In that time she managed to pull her phone from her pocket, and she pushed it into his chest like some sort of offering. “I’m. _Sam_.”

Instinctively, he’d put one of his hands over hers to keep her phone from falling should she pull away, but strange as it was to say, Sam couldn’t help feeling that _she_ was the one who’d pinned _him_.

From that distance, less than a breath between them, she could see each and every tiny movement of his face, his eyes, so it was impossible to pretend she didn’t notice the terror that sudden snap of anger had been meant to hide. It melted into confusion, that confusion became irritation, the irritation circled back to confusion, and then…and then something clicked.

He took a step back, eyes dropping to her phone as she held it out into the open air, watching it as though it were a cobra instead of an outdated iPhone. “No you’re not.” She saw the look he threw her, the psych major look, the one that made it abundantly clear he was searching for any sign of deception: her eyes shifting to the left maybe, or a twitch in her nose. Whatever he was looking for, he clearly didn’t find it, because he just kind of shook his head. “You’re not. You’re not…no. Nononono. Huh-uh.”

For her part, Sam didn’t move. She just stood there, her phone held between them, her mind whirring a million miles an hour to try and come up with what to say or do, short of pulling up her voicemails and proving once and for all that she wasn’t the one pulling some kind of awful prank.

He’d taken up pacing right where she’d left off, not that the cramped dorm left him a whole lot of room. “You’re not,” he kept saying, no doubt trying to convince himself, “If you were…if you were _that_ Sam, I’d know. I’d fucking _know_, because—”

“You wouldn’t have seen me. I wasn’t at the service.” It spilled out of her completely against her will. Her body rejected the thought like a sneeze. Once it was out in the open, she figured he’d stop moving, maybe throw a disgusted glare her way, but…per the usual, Josh was nothing if not full of surprises. He just shook his head again and kept moving, leaving her to stumble over her words. “I just…I couldn’t go. I-I wanted to, I did, but it—”

Josh’s reaction to that was a scoff. A real, honest-to-goodness _scoff_, and Sam immediately shut her mouth. She’d expected him to be mad or insulted or _anything_, really—anything other than what she actually got. “Yeah, join the club.”

Well that…she couldn’t make heads or tails of _that_. So she just continued to stare at him, her eyebrows drawn together so intensely that she could actually feel a tension headache begin to take root.

He didn’t look her way but seemed to sense her confusion all the same. Blowing a deflated breath out from a grit jaw, Josh ran his hands furiously through his hair before dropping them from his head and muttering a quiet, “Sure. Sure, why the fuck not,” to the air before explaining. “IIIIII…didn’t go either.”

If her eyebrows were squinched together any tighter, they would’ve torn themselves clean off her face. “…what?”

“Mhm.” There was a lilt to his voice that she couldn’t immediately place; it wasn’t _pride_, and it wasn’t _amusement_, but it was still (outwardly) more chipper than it had any right to be. When coupled with the look on his face, Sam got the idea that it was some sort of strained defense, his curdled drawl a coping mechanism she simply hadn’t been exposed to before—a mask of childish self-deprecation meant to be a barrier. ‘You can’t fire me, I quit,’ in different packaging, something more like, ‘_You_ can’t be disappointed in me, _you_ can’t be disgusted by me, I do that all by _myself_, thank you very much.’

“I guess you could say I _freaked out_ a little after it happened,” Josh said in that same strange, strained voice, liberally throwing a mess of air-quotes into the mix. “Had something of a _breakdown_, went off the _deep-end_, you know how it goes.” Then he _did_ stop moving, standing directly in front of her window, blocking the falling snow from view, “So, so, so, so what, this is a joke?” He folded his arms across his chest, steeling his jaw in such a way that made the angles of his face that much more pronounced, “You come join up with us and then spring this on me like this is _Punk’d_, is that what this is? Pretty shitty goddamn sense of humor there, Sammy—”

“Am I _laughing?!_” It was only then that she realized she was still holding her phone out. Feeling unspeakably stupid as she did so, she shoved it back into her pocket, away from their view; there was no use pretending either of them would (or _could_) forget about it, though. Oh no, there was zero chance of that happening. “I had no idea who you were until Blackwood came up! _That’s_ why I freaked out, _that’s_ why I was upset, _that—_”

“Of _all_ the stupid listings for groups and clubs and shit, you want me to believe—you _honestly want me to believe_—that you just, what? Stumbled on _mine_ by accident?” Whatever steadiness his voice had had in the beginning of the conversation had long-since flown out the window. Never once had she heard that waver behind his words, not during any ghost investigation or hangout…not even after the rock in the corn maze. She wondered if he was doing the same mental math she was, connecting the same dots.

Her tongue poked at the tip of one of her teeth. How to answer that one, how to answer that one…

‘Funny story,’ she could almost hear herself saying, ‘I didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter. See, I think maybe, perhaps, it’s possible that just for a minute or two, my laptop was, uh, haunted! Just like my quarters and the lights at that party and the psych department’s servers and that stupid scarecrow from the maze and the seatbelt of your car and let’s not forget your bathroom mirror!’

Of course, ‘_almost_’ was the operative word in that little plan. Believer or not, this didn’t feel like the moment to press her luck with Josh.

So what she said instead was what Chris had told her before, “You had nothing to do with that listing! Ash wouldn’t let either of you guys near it, and it’s not like your names were on the page!”

Another scoff, significantly more frenzied than the first. He raked his fingers through his hair again and again until a few cowlicks began to stand out comically from the rest.

“Don’t you think I would’ve _said something_ before now?” Her phone felt too heavy in her back pocket, like it was a brick instead of plastic. “You really think I’m that much of a jerk?” Sam was surprised to hear her own voice—there was any hurt in it, and that seemed like a hell of a thing. There was confusion, sure, but somehow she had pictured his all going…differently.

When Josh finally looked up from the floor to meet her gaze, she could only offer him a shrug in reply. It wouldn’t have been right to say she felt _better_ getting it out in the open (she didn’t), but there was a kind of relief that had come with it, the sense of having purged something poisonous from her stomach, and it had left her feeling winded. After another few seconds of that awkward silence, she sat herself down on the edge of her mattress, taking up only a sliver. She figured if he wanted to join her, he’d get the message.

“The other day at your apartment…Ash started telling me about the Canada trip.” Her voice was more measured then, but not by a whole lot. “About the sanatorium and stuff. But then she mentioned Blackwood Pines, and just…” She turned her hands palms-up on her knees and slowly shook her head. “I figured I would’ve _known_ if the twins had a _famous dad_.”

She’d been staring at the natty carpeting as she said it so she didn’t see Josh move, but she most certainly felt the way the mattress dipped as he sat near the foot of the bed. “Yeah, well…” He kept speaking with that snippy cadence, making her think of some tragic movie protagonist preparing for a monologue. “They didn’t exactly, uh, go bragging about Pop.” Something about the way he said it made her realize _he_ hadn’t, either—it had been Chris and Ashley who’d told her in the first place. “Not everyone’s particularly _proud_ of the schlock he puts out.”

The room went quiet again. Around them, the sounds of the dorm continued to hum just below the surface, people stomping up and down the stairs, doors slamming, laughter ringing out from some distant, unseen place. And the two of them simply sat there looking down at their own hands, their thoughts nearly loud enough to constitute speech.

It was a markedly different silence than before. The tension had been taken out of it—_bled_ out of it, really—and now it had settled into something softer around the edges, something less like surprise and more like grief.

Sam heard Josh take in a sharp, deep breath, and so she braced herself for the questions she was sure would follow; she was, after all, the mysterious contact Hannah’s last calls had gone out to, so he’d probably ask all those same awful questions she’d been asked during the inquest, the who-what-where-when-why of that day…

“I was supposed to _drive them_,” he said instead, tone perfectly matter-of-fact, his mouth still stuck in that shape—the one that had started as his usual smirk but was not looking more and more like a grimace of absolute agony with each second that ticked by. “But I went to a party the night before. And I got…pretty drunk. Wasted, in fact. ‘Sloshed,’ as the kids say. One could even go so far as to say ‘Completely Goddamn Shitfaced.’ So I ended up passing right the fuck out and sleeping the sleep of angels until I woke up in the middle of the afternoon to two other morons nursing hangovers, and when I checked my phone, wouldn’t you know it, I had about a thousand missed texts from my sisters, who were both telling me to wake the fuck up and answer my phone.”

Sam wasn’t sure whether to wince or widen her eyes. It was a familiar story. Horribly so.

“But, see, the last few ones were them essentially saying ‘Hey fuck you, we’re not waiting anymore, so you can just meet us there.’” He scrunched his nose up in an obvious display of bitterness. “So I didn’t bother answering.”

Frowning down into the knot of her hands on her lap, Sam pressed her lips together. She and _that_ guilt were old friends. Was this the part where she was supposed to say something reassuring? Something about how maybe _he_ would’ve died too, had he gone with them? About how sleeping through his alarm could’ve been the only thing keeping the Washingtons from being _completely_ childless?

None of those things would’ve made _her_ feel better, she knew, so…she didn’t say anything. She just kept staring down at the space between her knees, her fingers tangling and untangling, the heel of her foot knocking an anxious rhythm against the bedframe. Slowly, still debating with herself over whether it would be the right move, she reached over to put her hand on his knee, pretending she wasn’t stretching to her limit to do it.

A moment passed, two, and then one of his hands closed over hers, his forefinger absently tapping at her knuckles as though in thought.

The quiet came back for its encore performance, and again it had changed its shape, becoming something even fuzzier. It might have stretched on forever, but then the mattress creaked again as Josh scooted more towards the middle, all signs of his earlier defensiveness withered into nothing as he muttered, “This is fuckin’ weird, Sammy, _real_ fuckin’ weird.”

“Tell me about it,” she sighed, letting gravity and inevitability pull her to the middle of the bed as well, tucking her chin against Josh’s shoulder once she was close enough. “Welcome to my world.”

Things took on the strange shape of a dream for a few hours after that. There was talking, she cried, there was definitely a pizza (and a deeply concerned delivery guy) involved at one point, but everything felt numb and syrupy. They talked around the events that stood out as particularly strange, instead bringing up stories about the twins that usually made them laugh, discussing Blackwood Pines and the holidays the family had spent there, a million little things that were just familiar enough to both of them to explain how and why they’d gotten on so well from the start. The day seemed to fly by and drag on at once, making sense in an upside-down sort of way. It was _very_ different than the afternoon she’d spent in Hill’s office earlier that week.

Eventually, the wind pulled out of her sails by ears and memories, it became too much, and she found herself dozing, falling into a fitful sleep. And then just as suddenly…she was awake again, eyes open wide to stare at dark slivers of sky visible through the slats of her blinds.

At first she wasn’t sure what did it; one second she’d been asleep, the next she was awake, and that was _all_ she knew for a few bleary seconds. Then the knocking came, loud and insistent, sending her heart racing up into her throat. Sam held her breath, waiting, and nearly jumped out of her skin when three more knocks rang out through the room.

The tiny dorm room bed wasn’t really _meant_ to be shared, so she didn’t have to _reach out_ so much as she move her fingers to jostle the shape wedged between her and the wall. “Josh. _Josh_.” The only response to her hiss was a quiet grumbling, so she jabbed at his back a bit harder. “Josh, _seriously_.”

Her comforter rustled as he repositioned himself, rolling his shoulder to shrug her away, grumbling a few words she didn’t understand and a few she did. “…an’ is jus’ Cochise…”

“One tiny problem with that,” she whispered, eyes still locked on the door as she flicked the shell of his ear. “We’re in _my dorm, _remember?”

There was a moment where he sputtered, grabbing at his face, but something—the tone of her voice, maybe, or the actual words she’d said—seemed to snap him out of it. Slowly he sat up, turning his head towards the door as another set of three knocks shook it on its hinges. “Yeah,” he muttered, words clumsy with sleep but eyes bright with awareness, “I can see how that’d be an issue.”

She was relieved to see him flinch when the next series of knocks came. At least it wasn’t just _her_.

“RA?” Josh rubbed his face to wake himself up, blinking hard a few times.

Doubtful—the floor’s RA was a flake and a half, and why the fuck would she be coming to bug at her at _this_ hour? During _finals_ _week?_ Something about the situation made her tongue feel too heavy to get that all out, so she settled for, “She’d say something.”

He hummed lowly. There was a long pause between them as they stared at the door, waiting for the next sound to come. “Are you…gonna check it out?”

Sam frowned, shooting him a disbelieving look. “Uh, aren’t _you_ the big, bad paranormal researcher? _You_ check it out!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was under the impression you were _also_ a big, bad paranormal researcher, my bad. What? You expect _me_ to do it because I’m the guy?” If nothing else, at least he was sounding like himself again. “Now that’s just plain sexist.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes but it was a close fucking battle. “I _expect_ you to do it because I thought you _liked_ this spooky crap!” There was another rustle as he turned to look at her, and Sam huffed a frustrated breath through her nose. “Okay, okay, and also…it’s hard for me to see out the peephole, okay? Are you happy now?”

_Knock knock knock!_

He waved for her to get out of his way, sliding off the bed and beginning to pad towards the door. “Remind me to get you a stepladder or something for Christmas…”

“Har-de-har,” she whispered, following close on his heels.

They crept to the door, Josh peering through the peephole, Sam bending just a bit to try and spot the shadows of feet in the tiny wedge of light between the bottom of the door and the carpeting…and both jumped like startled housecats when another brisk set of knocks came from only inches away.

“Okay, ha ha, hilarious. Why don’t you…” Sam watched Josh pull the door open and stick his head out. She didn’t need to see his face to know the expression he’d be wearing—she would’ve bet dollars to donuts she had the same one on _her_ face as they stood there on the other side of the threshold, staring out at nothing but an empty hallway. “…oh please,” Josh muttered, gesturing for her to take the door so it wouldn’t lock behind him. He stepped into the hallway, looking down one side then the other, but it was clear as day there was no one else around. All the chatter from earlier had gone away, the lights in the study area were off, and as far as either of them could tell, there wasn’t any light coming from the tiny shared kitchen either, so…

A tiny noise from behind her made Sam jump out of her skin. Still holding the door open, she whirled around just in time to see the screen of her phone light up and then go dark. “Hey Josh…” she began, letting the last syllable drag on in a hiss of its own.

“No one out here,” he said, answering a completely different question as he ducked back into the room. “Comedian’s probably hiding in the stairwell or some shit. Assho—what’s with the face?”

Once there wasn’t any risk of him locking himself out, she let go of the door, making it to where her phone was charging on her desk just as its screen lit up again. She tried to swallow and found she couldn’t, her throat feeling like sandpaper and chalk. Her fingers were shaking as she grabbed it, and she hoped the darkness of the room would be enough to keep Josh from seeing that. She read the notifications on her screen, blinked, tried to find her voice. “H-hey Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s your phone?”

“Uh…” The only warning she got before the lights came on was a soft _click_ from behind her. Josh walked over to her, making a low sound of acknowledgement, “Ah, there, I set it on the ledge to charge, why?”

She didn’t answer because she knew she didn’t have to. She felt him looking over her shoulder. It didn’t take a genius to know he was reading what she was reading. “I think…” she said, when she trusted her voice again, “Your phone’s doing it’s speech-to-text thing.”

He pulled in a long breath. “It sure looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Neither of them moved for a long while, so absorbed in reading and rereading the texts on Sam’s screen.

Josh  
  
wake up wake up wake up wake up  
  


And then:

Josh  
  
I'm cold.  
  


After what might’ve been a minute but just as easily could’ve been an hour, Sam set her phone back down on her desk, making sure to place it with its screen against the wood. “Hey Josh?”

“Hey Sam?”

She inhaled deeply, let it out slowly, set her shoulders, and made the admission she’d been desperately trying avoid from the very start. “I think I’m starting to really, _really_ believe in ghosts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohoho, I'm sorry, you thought I'd pass up the opportunity to shoehorn some bed-sharing into this? Please.
> 
> PLEASE!
> 
> (Hope everyone out there is taking care of themselves and hanging in there <3)


	15. All alone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and the rest of the CREEPs go for a drive.

“So here’s what I’m thinking about the whole ‘Let’s scare Alex’ thing…”

Chris groaned, his eye-roll perfectly visible in the rearview mirror. “Jesus, we’re still doing that?”

“Uh, duh?”

“Dude, since when do we _ever_ follow-through on giving _Conrad_ what he wants? Is that really the level we’ve sunk to? I mean, lying to people on the internet is one thing, but a guy’s gotta have limits.”

“I’ll have you know, Cochise, that I’m a man of my word. If I say I’m gonna scare the pants off someone, then by God, those pants are coming off!”

Ashley let out a long-suffering sigh and twisted herself around to face him and Sam from her spot in the passenger seat. “What did you have in mind?”

Josh leaned forward until his seatbelt pulled tight across his jacket. “Okay, so…”

She stretched herself out, looking back in time to watch him make an old-timey viewfinder with his thumbs and forefingers as he launched into a spiel she only half-heard and (judging by the look on her face) Ash only half-cared about. All the same, Sam couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

Now that their dirty laundry had been aired out, things just felt…better. Not perfect, obviously, and there was no point in pretending like there wouldn’t be _some_ weirdness they’d have to deal with once they made it to the lodge…but still, it was _better_. With everything about the twins out in the open, spending a couple weeks of winter break tucked away in a private ski lodge with a bunch of friends and a trunk full of snacks sounded pretty sweet. _Ideal_, even.

And yeah, okay, there was still the matter of the, uh…okay, the _bizarre_ shit that seemed to happen every so often when they were hanging out, but like…that was part of being a paranormal investigator, right?

Right.

“Oooh!” Ash’s earlier disinterest had apparently blossomed into something else entirely. She pulled the sucker from out of her mouth and gestured with it like a professor using a laser pointer. “We should do the drawing thing! That _always_ gets people.”

Josh clapped his hands together once. “_Fuck_ that’s a good idea!”

“I’m full of them.”

Chris raised his hand over the center console and seesawed it, eyes never leaving the road. “Eh.”

“Oh, shush. No one asked you.”

Knowing full well that their little schtick could (and would) last for the rest of the drive if she let it, Sam cut in. “I’m sorry, ‘drawing thing?’ I thought I’d seen all your tricks by now.”

“Pfft, not even close.”

“So, for the drawing th—_hey!_” Ashley frowned at Josh as he stole her sucker and popped it into his own mouth. “I could be sick,” she said incredulously, narrowing her eyes in what was either disgust or bald-faced scientific intrigue.

He waved her on, his cheek bulging in a manner that struck Sam as decidedly chipmunk-esque. “You were gonna explain the drawing trick. I’m just keeping this warm ‘til you’re done.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“I call dibs next!”

“Oh, I hate you two so much…”

“Hey Sammy, you wanna get in on this action?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s _graaape_…”

When she realized this was a losing battle, Ashley groaned and turned her attention to Sam again. “The drawing thing,” she began, raising her voice to be heard over the guys’ doofy laughter, “Is this neat little trick where Josh and I look up a photo of someone before we do the investigation. Usually it’s someone who, like, previously owned the house we’re checking out or a, uh…” she cleared her throat and averted her eyes, “…dead relative…and then I say that I saw a ‘presence’ wandering around.” The word was accompanied by gratuitous finger-wiggling. “Cuz, y’know, psychic medium and all that jazz…then I start describing the person’s features as I remember them and Josh draws it and…that’s about it!”

“It. _Slays_.” Josh added. “Every. Single. Time.” He widened his eyes until they were mostly whites, pressing a hand to his chest before keening in a wavery voice, “B-b-but…that’s dear, sweet Grandmàmà! She passed back in nineteen-aught-seven!” He and Chris collapsed into snickers again, though quite frankly, she hadn’t found the voice _that_ funny.

Sam turned to him with a quirked eyebrow. “Since when do you draw?”

He only gave her a one-shouldered shrug in reply, but both Ashley and Chris made a point to get their two cents in.

“He’s like, freakishly good. You wouldn’t guess by looking at him, but…”

“Mhm, just like Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie.”

“_Titanic_.”

“Uh…no…I don’t think that’s right.”

“It’s _Titantic_, Chris.”

“Pretty sure it’s not, Ash.”

“I—oh my God.”

“It’s the ‘Draw me like one of your French girls’ one.”

“Yeah. _Titanic!_”

“…I still don’t think that’s right.”

They’d been driving for hours already, the minivan having taken on that buzzy roadtrip feel long, long ago; granola bar and chip wrappers jammed between armrests, seats moved up and down and up again as they tried to find optimal comfiness, the aux cord lying unused as the radio played (they had _all_ plugged their phones by that point, and each had summarily lost their music privileges for some reason or another). It was only once the radio signal started cutting out that they knew they were getting close, though the snow had been a pretty good clue, falling in lazy flakes at first, then absolutely pummeling them.

Sam watched the scenery as they flew by it, a terrible, nagging voice at the very back of her head ruining any enjoyment she might’ve found in the white-capped trees and still ponds. Her eyes kept searching the surroundings for a roadside marker—one of those crosses people sometimes jammed into the ground just off the shoulder of a highway, or a particularly gnarly dent in the supports of a sign, or even just streaks of tire tracks on the road itself—some terrible proof that they’d made it to the spot where it had gone down. Had the twins made it this far? Farther?

A peal of laughter from the other three shook her out of that line of thinking, and not a second too soon. Blech. In a bid to look casual, she reached up and swiped the window with her sleeve, cutting through the fog their talking had caused. “Not to sound like a five-year-old or anything, but…”

Before she could finish, Chris jokingly smacked one of his palms against the steering wheel, “We’ll _get there_ when we _get there!_ Now stop complaining or so help me, I will _turn this car around!_”

“I mean, I _am_ getting kinda hungry now that you mention it…” There was a little clicking sound as Ash reclined her seat a bit more, now almost in Sam’s lap. Turning to Josh, she raised her eyebrows, “So…”

He looked between the two of them, eyes moving from Sam to Ash before he turned his hands palms-up, “I’m not the one _driving_, I cannot _help_ you.” Leaning forward, he checked the GPS system, mouth pulled into a curl of concentration.

She wasn’t about to ask, no way, no how, but Sam suspected Josh had been doing the same as her, staring out the window at each and every landmark they passed, just…_wondering_. Definitely not a topic of discussion with Chris and Ashley in the car, but oof, she couldn’t shake the feeling.

“We should be getting into town in like ten minutes. Maybe an hour, if Cochise keeps driving at half the speed limit.”

“Ha ha, make fun of me all you want, man. You see some of these turns?! Fuckin’ hairpin. I’m not messing with ‘em.”

The topic got dropped, uh, pretty quickly after that.

Clearing her throat, Ashley looked Sam’s way and gestured for Chris to turn the radio’s volume up. “Wait ‘til we get there,” she said, “To actually get up to the lodge we have to take this lift and it’s _totally_ crazy. You get so high up into the mountains you can see _everything!_”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Josh sighed playfully, letting his head rest against the window to his side. “Cable car’s pretty cool, I guess. If you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Y’know, I’ve been thinking about that…” Chris sat back after adjusting the radio’s volume (uselessly, it seemed, given how often the signal kept cutting out into nothing but static). “With all the tech shit we brought, we’re probably gonna have to make two trips.”

“Who cares? It’s not like we’ve got a deadline.”

“I know, just…i-i-it’s gonna be cramped no matter what we do, is what I’m saying. We can probably each sit with a bag on our laps, that might help, but for the bigger stuff, we might have to—”

“Hey, I thought we were on _vacation?_” Sam peeled her eyes away from the pine trees zipping past them, instead sticking her tongue out at Chris from the rearview mirror. “The creepy crap can totally wait.”

“Yeah man, I shoulda hoped that if you’d learned anything by now, it’s that ghosts are _patient_.” Josh snickered as he said it, lacing his hands behind his head in a makeshift pillow. “The ghoulies waiting for us in the nuthouse will be there even if it takes us _three_ whole tri—”

She must’ve been spending too much time with them, because Sam could’ve sworn she heard Ash’s groan a full second before it actually happened. “Oh my _God_, don’t call it that.”

“Don’t call it _what?_”

“A nuthouse! Jiminy Christmas, Josh! It’s a _sanatorium_. They were used to treat tuberculosis first, and then yeah, okay, people started using them—”

“As nuthouses.”

“Stop! That’s so not PC. You better get that out of your system now, because I swear, I’ll make us do a million takes. Do you know how long I worked on researching this stuff? On coming up with a script that wasn’t just ‘Hurr durr, mental illness scary?!’”

“Let me guess. A long time?”  
  
“A long time!”

He shot a look Sam’s way as if to say ‘You see what I deal with?’ before shaking his head. “Fine, fine, fine, let me rephrase: Cochise, I’m sure the ghoulies waiting for us in the—”

Up until that moment, the radio had been playing some crappy Top 50 chart, the poppy beats and repetitive lyrics broken every few seconds by static as they climbed higher into the mountains. When the interference broke up that time, though, they got something entirely different.

In a scene that felt cut straight from a cheap horror movie, all four of them slowly but surely went quiet, each turning their attention to the digital readout of the radio as a tinny, somehow _antiquated_ melody played over the speakers. Sam felt her skin rise up in goosebumps despite the layers she was wearing, the back of her neck prickling as if someone had just gingerly skated their fingertips along the stretch of it. One by one they sat up straighter, expressions drawing in, neither Chris nor Ash seeming capable of reaching over to touch the volume dial, and all the while a pair of high, tremulous voices sang along to the old rhyme, genderless and whisper-soft: “_Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, brother John? Brother John? Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing, ding dang dong, ding dang dong…_”

The melody, the voices, the song itself trailed off into nothing, the low _fwip-fwip_ of the windshield wipers keeping time even as the radio gave way to silence.

No one moved. No one said a word. For a moment it genuinely seemed that none of them _breathed_…

And then the radio came to life again, a burst of static interrupting a much-too-energetic announcer: “—CKWOOD COUNTY’S NUMBER ONE STATION FOR KID’S TUNES! NEXT UP, OUR MOST REQUESTED SONG OF THE WEEK!” There were a few notes, not nearly enough to give them any sort of warning, before, “BABY SHARK DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO!”

Chris smacked the dial to turn the radio off.

It was a relief at first, the snowy silence that filled the car, though it didn’t take too long for the squeaking of the wiper blades to pull on their already frayed nerves.

“So,” came Chris’s comment, oddly dad-like in its delivery, “_That_ was weird.”

The snow definitely didn’t stop, but it let up almost as soon as they noticed the wilderness around them breaking up. If there was a sign to mark the little hamlet, then Sam didn’t see it; to her it was as though the town appeared out of nowhere, a wintry Brigadoon where the people outside were bundled up to the point of looking like tiny yetis and all the buildings seemed to be made out of actual, honest-to-goodness logs…it was a scene that made her feel sort of like she’d somehow managed to find her way inside of a snowglobe someone had given a good shake to.

“Oh thank _God_. Fucking starving. I could eat my own leg.”

“Yeah, I was just starting to think your leg was looking pretty tasty too, honestly.”

There was a general rustle as everyone set about undoing the comfortable slouches they’d found themselves in—undoing seatbelts, wriggling into jackets, lacing boots on, jamming hats over heads, the usual—but it was only once the latch of the trunk clicked open that Sam suspected something was up. “Uh,” she started, turning towards all the stuff stashed into the back of the van, “What’s, uh…what’s going on?”

Ash’s sigh _probably_ would’ve been all the answer she needed, but Josh was never one to pass up an opportunity to hear his own voice. “Well we gotta dig out at least _one_ of the handhelds, Sammy.”

She glanced to Ashley, who just sort of shrugged apologetically. “We…do?”

“Yeah, how else are we gonna get interviews?”

It took a second to sink in (blame the cold). When it did, though, oh when it did…Sam rolled her eyes to the ceiling of the van, slumping down deep into her seat. “I thought we were just getting lunch? Are you guys _seriously_ gonna interrogate _everyone_ we pass?”

Chris slammed the driver’s side door shut before reappearing at the mouth of the trunk, rifling through the piles of stuff. “Pretty much! Have you uh, not been paying attention? At all? Unwanted and inappropriately timed questions are sort of what we _do_ here.”

“What, you worried you’re gonna run into someone you _know_ in there?” Josh teased, making no attempt to defend himself as she leaned over, grabbed the brim of his beanie, and yanked it down over his eyes. “Professional.”

“Aren’t _you_ worried that _you’ll _run into someone you know? I mean, we _are_ heading to _your_ family’s vacation house.”

He tugged his hat back into place just in time for her to catch him rolling his eyes. “Yeah, not too concerned about that one, believe it or not. We’ve never really been a roadside diner kinda family, if you catch my drift.”

Her hopes of sprinting through the snow into the warm embrace of a restaurant and plate of steaming food were quickly dashed. There weren’t a _ton_ of people milling about the little strip of a shopping center they’d pulled into, but there were more than enough willing to talk to Josh once he brought up the magic words; most of the adults shook their heads and politely excused themselves at the mention of the Blackwood Sanatorium, a fact that wasn’t a _huge_ surprise to her, but man oh man the people their age were all _over_ that shit.

Per the usual, he handled most of it, only having Sam step in every few people or so to mix it up a little, and that was _fine_. Mostly because all either of them ever had the chance to get out was “What can you tell me about the sanato—” before the people they were talking to launched themselves into their stories.

“Oh, it’s crazy haunted! My cousin and his friends went up there once and—”

“Yeah, my great-great-great-great grandfather worked as an orderly there and _he_ said there was this one night where—”

“—and that’s when the cannibalism started.”

“No, seriously, they said it was like seven…maybe _eight_ feet tall, with these long, long arms, and claws, and…wait, maybe it was that its _legs_ were super long? Anyway—”

“—by the time anyone knew anything was wrong, they were all dead!”

“They say if you listen really hard at night, you can _still_ hear the screaming, but—”

By the time they reached the end of the campfire stories, their teeth were chattering and their hands had gone numb. Each and every interview had been different…to an extent. She’d been hanging out with the gang for long enough to recognize the kernels they’d latch onto in the end, the generic, spooky pieces-parts that they could pepper into whatever the final story ended up being, but wow, it was immediately obvious that this plan of theirs was a good one: The sanatorium wasn’t just a local urban legend, it was a full-on _phenomenon_. No wonder they’d been so excited to make the trip up there!

So caught up in the whirlwind of it all, Sam didn’t really have time to realize how…_distracted_ she’d been until they were cramming themselves into their booth to eat. She slid in first, the uncomfortable vinyl of the seats squeaking as she made herself comfortable near the window, and as the hum of the diner settled in around them, she remembered the alien lump of her phone in her pocket. When was the last time she’d gone so long without anxiously checking it? She wasn’t sure she could remember, and wasn’t _that_ strange? After all, she was, um, well…at the scene of the crime, so to speak. There she was in the middle of Blackwood County, on her way to the very same destination the twins had set out for a year ago, and…she was…laughing? And smiling? And joking around? And having a good time?

None of that seemed to mesh the right way.

She slid out of her jacket and draped it over the back of their booth, all the while trying to find a way to soften her smile into something that felt more respectful of the situation. They’d come up here for the ghost hunting—_paranormal research_—aspect of it, obviously, though she’d figured from the get-go that the trip would be more about closure than creepy-crawlies for her. From the corner of her eye, she chanced a glance Josh’s way, but sitting next to her as he was, it was difficult to parse too much from his profile. Maybe she’d ask him about it once they actually got up to the lodge.

Maybe _he’d_ ask _her_.

Their server, a young woman right about their age, was more than happy to launch into the rumors _she’d_ heard about the sanatorium as she handed them their menus, but only after they’d muddled through a supremely awkward explanation of why, precisely, they were all wearing matching sweatshirts (“Crepes?” “It’s a long story.” “If you all want breakfast, sorry, but we don’t make it this time of day, so…” “Yeah, see, I can understand how you might think that, but no, it’s a ghost thing.” “…oookay.”).

As she walked off, Josh grabbed one of the flimsy paper napkins from the table’s dispenser, patting his pockets down until he managed to pull out a pen. “You wanna see a real-time example of the drawing trick?” Ostensibly he’d been asking Sam, but he didn’t wait even half a second for her response before he was lightly tracing the general shape of a head.

“I mean, sure?” Sam folded her arms on the table, craning her head to get a better view of what he was doing. “Who’re you gonna draw?” She looked up when a small throat clearing noise came from the other side of the table.

In public as they were, she doubted Ashley was about to go into the full-out medium act she did for the camera, but she had definitely sat herself up a bit straighter and closed her eyes, a tiny wrinkle of concentration creasing the space between her eyebrows. “Um…okay, so…she’s…a young woman. Early 20’s maybe? She has…she has a well defined chin, but not…not _pointy_, y’know, um…” She frowned a bit deeper, raising a hand to rub at the bridge of her nose. “A thin nose…narrow…her mouth…um…she has cupid’s bow lips…”

Her gaze moved back to Josh’s napkin drawing, and that was when she realized what was going on. “Oh my _God_,” she laughed, shaking her head and leaning in closer, “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

“Shhh Sammy, can’t you see Ash is _channeling the spirits?_ It’s incredibly rude to interrupt.” A few more strokes of the pen and there was no denying it, he was absolutely drawing _her_, and geez Louise, drawing her _awfully well_ for how quickly he was making his lines. “Keep goin’ Ash, I’m not used to getting to draw the _sexy_ ghosts.”

She nudged him with her shoulder, nearly causing him to scribble out one of her eyes. Josh recovered quickly enough, turning the blob of ink into a fan of eyelashes with a few practiced flicks of his wrist.

Thankfully it didn’t take too much longer for their food to get to them, hot and greasy and smelling like bad decisions. She couldn’t help but cluck her tongue when she saw what the other’s had gotten, clearly having zoned out when they’d actually ordered. “I’m sorry, we’re in the middle of a blizzard, and you dorks ordered _milkshakes?_”

“You don’t have to say it like it’s _weird_.”

“It absolutely is. Who eats ice cream when it’s this cold out?”

“People who aren’t wimps, obviously.”

“Ouch.”

They were all happy enough to take a break from the endless talk of their plans for the sanatorium investigation to stuff their faces. The whole car ride there had been full of ideal camera locations and debates about what spots would look the spookiest in night-vision, what the best tricks to use to subvert their viewers’ expectations would be and how to avoid dying of lead poisoning from touching old paint. As long as they waited until _after_ the storm to get their footage, Sam thought they were probably pretty darn well off…it was obvious that they really _had_ been planning this excursion for months.

By the time she made it down to the last few fries on her plate, the joking had mostly calmed itself into the sleepy mumblings that always seemed to follow a heavy meal, the buzz of the diner’s other patrons filling in the gaps. She glanced up to the other side of the table as she mopped up a smear of ketchup with a limp fry, and laughed quietly as she recognized the old song and dance she remembered from their very first investigation together—Chris trying to fish the cherry from his shake with his straw, Ash leaning over his shoulder to watch, and Josh rolling his eyes before stabbing his fork down into the glass and pulling it out with a victorious flourish. Sam gave a polite little golf clap as he held the fork out towards Ashley.

“Um, hey?”

“You’re welcome.”

“I-I’m sorry, did I just have some kinda…out-of-body experience? Did I go amnesic for a second there and _tell you_ to do that?”

She watched Josh’s eyebrows arch upwards. He stuck his fork into his mouth and (in a move that was _also_ incredibly familiar) pulled it out clean.

“Maybe _I_ wanted it!”

At that, Josh made a noise she could only describe as a snorty groan, leaning forward with his weight on his forearms. “Cochise. Everyone at this table—” he paused long enough to sweep an arm in a grand gesture, “—knows for a _fact_ that you want Ash to take your cherry. And don’t you worry…I have it on good authority that _she_ wants it _juuust_ as bad. So!” He sat back in his seat, smacking the table with his palm, the world’s strangest judge with the world’s most ineffective gavel, “I was simply _facilitating_ the process.”

The fact that he didn’t immediately burst into flame under the combined scorn of Chris and Ashley’s glares was quite possibly the most supernatural thing Sam had ever seen in her life (and _yes_, that included the quarter thing). It was impossible to miss how they both ‘subtly’ scooted a few inches away from one another at the comment, much less the way their faces went red. They were so easy to get a rise out of. Just so, _so_ easy. Sometimes it flat-out amazed her that they’d managed to survive Josh’s teasing for as long as they had, or that neither of them had strangled him yet.

Well…

That neither had strangled him yet, _to her knowledge_.

As though sensing their displeasure (she doubted he actually _did_), Josh grabbed and unfolded another napkin, pushing his plate out of the way so he’d have more space. “Hey, c’mon, let’s show Sam how it’s _really_ done. Gimme someone I don’t know.”

Ashley heaved a dramatic sigh. She was still glaring at Josh as though she could melt him with the sheer power of her disapproval…and when his face didn’t go wet and runny like the bad guy from that _Indiana Jones _movie, she gave up and instead began searching the diner. “Hmm,” she hummed under her breath, “Hmm hmm hmm…I…oh, okay.” She was looking out the window, Sam noticed, probably so she didn’t have to run the risk of anyone at a nearby table catching her staring. “He’s older, I think…um…roundish face, definitely rounder…not much of a chin…the nose is…there’s…a narrow bridge, but the nose itself is round too, kind of…smooshed almost…there’s a…the hairline is a severe widow’s peak…”

“Eyes?”

“I…I can’t see them.”

Only then did Josh glance up from his napkin, throwing an amused, if not slightly impressed look her way. “No eyes? Très creepy! I like that, save it for the taping lat—”

Ashley shook her head, “No, I can’t see them because he’s wearing something…um…goggles? Not skiing goggles, though, they’re more like…” She moved closer to the window and squinted a bit, and Sam’s curiosity finally got the better of her—she turned to the window too, immediately seeing the figure Ash was describing. Oh, _yikes_. “I think they’re welding goggles?”

“_Welding gog_—the fuck are you talking about?” There was a rustle as both Josh and Chris moved to join them at the window overlooking their table.

Lo and behold, a row or two away from where they’d parked, there was some guy in a big, fur-lined parka and yes, _welding goggles_, loading what seemed to be hunting equipment into the back of a pickup truck. There was something off about the way he moved, something _unsettling_ in the way he heaved each item up into the flatbed, but it was the thing strapped to his back that _really_ caught Sam’s attention.

“Now why,” Chris started, straining to get a good look without inadvertently pressing too close to Ashley, “Is he lugging around a got-dang _flamethrower_ out here?”

“Maybe to clear away the snow?” Ash offered.

“Yeah, thanks Nancy Drew, definitely solved that case.” Josh turned away from the window, and Sam had the impression he waved an arm in the air or something, probably meaning to ask the server for their check. “I know I always go to my trusty flamethrower first when my driveway gets a little too frosty.”

“Well _I don’t know_,” she bristled, “I’m just trying to think of stuff that could make sense…”

“Is it even _legal_ to carry one of those things around?” When Sam turned again, it was to see their server quickly approaching the table, bill in hand. Eugh, she wondered if she could slip off to the restroom, maybe buy them a few minutes of time so they wouldn’t have to run into flamethrower guy in the parking lot. The trip had been strange enough already, what with the memory of the twins hanging over her like a storm cloud…the last thing she needed was—

Josh cleared his throat as their server arrived, and with something like dawning horror, Sam realized he’d put on his best salesman voice. The one he used when trying to goad someone into one of his schemes. “‘Scuse me,” he said with that smile of his, “Uh…what’s that guy’s deal, huh?”

This had bad news written _all_ over it.

“Hmm? Oh!” The server peered out the window and immediately her face wrinkled in distaste. “_Oh_,” flatter that time. “That’s crazy old Jack Fiddler.”

She wasn’t about to turn to see Josh’s expression, but she didn’t particularly need to—across the table, both of the others had embarked on their own face journeys, and she figured the look on Josh’s face was probably somewhere between Chris’s unrestrained glee and Ash’s abject confusion.

Oh this really, really, _really_ was bad news.

“Well that’s a hell of a name.” Still all teeth and dimples, Josh tilted his head to the side, “Local celebrity?”

She set their empty glasses onto her tray before letting out a little laugh through her nose. “_Something _like that…”

“Local _cryptid?_” Chris tried.

It didn’t land. The server shot him a perplexed glance over a tight-lipped smile before leaving their table once more.

Then Sam _did_ turn to Josh, and she _did_ look at his face; if such a thing were possible, she thought she’d momentarily caught a glimpse of the wheels turning ‘round and ‘round in his head. That had to be how she knew what was coming. She knew it was a futile effort…and still she tried to stop it before it could happen. “Hey I think—”

But of course it was too late. Whatever she’d wanted to say was gone—lost to the annals of time—because Chris and Josh were already on their feet, the former fumbling with his coat and camera bag, the latter slamming a few crumpled bills onto the table.

Ashley looked away from the window at the noise. “Um…?”

“Oooh, I wanna talk to crazy old Jack Fiddler,” Chris muttered, zipping his coat so quickly that it caught for a second.

“I don’t.”

“Tough.” Josh whirled around to talk to them, walking backwards towards the door as he did so (much to the chagrin of their poor server, who had to duck out of his way to avoid spilling what was on her tray). “Because ladies? Honestly? I have never, ever, _in my life_, wanted to talk to anyone _half_ as much as I want to talk to crazy old Jack Fiddler right now.”

“Bet he’s got some _real_ hot takes on the sanatorium sitch,” Chris added, the two of them guffawing. The bell above the door made its cheerful little ring as the both of them hurried out towards the parking lot…but like _hell_ were the girls about to go rushing after them.

“That man’s going to murder them,” Ash remarked, her voice so flat that Sam didn’t have any choice but to laugh.

She wiped a dab of ketchup from the corner of her mouth before grabbing the wad of money Josh had left in his wake. It wasn’t that she didn’t _trust_ him, so much as he’d been in such a goddamn hurry to run after the guy that she couldn’t believe he’d left the right amount. And to her credit, uh, he hadn’t.

Shock of shocks, huh?

“Hey, look on the bright side…if he kills them, then at least you don’t have to worry about piecing together a story later! We’ll just make the episode a retrospective on all the stupid th—”

“Oh my God, are those _wolves?!_”

When she looked up from the strenuous task that was basic math, she found Ashley all but pressed flush against the window, her eyes the size of the plates on the table.

Wolves? There was no way there would be— “Oh holy shit, those _are_ wolves.” Sam felt the hinge of her jaw go slack at the sight of the two monstrous dogs flanking old Jack. For the time being, it seemed Chris was keeping his distance, but ohoho, there was Josh—_of course!_—strolling up like it was no big deal, hand held out, mouth moving a mile a minute, and _oh_, none of that was good. Sam dropped the cash, pulled her jacket back on, and without any warning grabbed Ashley by the crook of her arm and positively _dragged_ her out of the booth. “What is _wrong_ with him?!”

Really, she’d meant to say it to herself, but as Ash picked up her pace to meet her stride, she answered as helpfully as she could, “Way more than we’ve got time to list, clearly.”

“Yeah, _clearly_.” Leaving the warmth of the diner for the parking lot was such a drastic change that she found herself momentarily dizzy, every muscle in her body seizing up as if she’d just jumped headfirst into a pool of ice water. The snow had picked up again while they were eating, it seemed, and she didn’t particularly like the thought of them driving up the rest of the mountain in that kind of weather…then again, she didn’t particularly like the thought of them standing in the middle of the parking lot chatting with crazy old Jack Fiddler in it either.

Over the wind, she could just barely make out the sound of Ash’s voice. “If I become a tally mark on a serial killer’s belt because of those dunderheads…”

Sam tucked her head in slightly, if only to get in a hissed aside of her own. “I think we could outrun ‘em.”

“I mean, the old guy, sure, but Sam…_wolves?_”

“Oh nonono, I meant Josh and Chris. Run faster than them and the wolves are _their_ problem.”

Now, she was _hardly_ the psychic of their stupid enterprise, but she’d managed to predict Josh’s spiel with such pinpoint accuracy that she thought she could’ve matched him word-for-word if she’d wanted to. And wasn’t _that_ a terrifying thought. “…documentary about the history of Blackwood Pines,” he was saying, seemingly oblivious to the surreal situation he’d led them into.

The man—crazy old Jack Fiddler—narrowed his eyes. “_Are_ you now?” There was a loud _clang!_ as he unloaded the flamethrower into the flatbed of his truck. When he turned back to face them properly, Sam had to catch herself from gasping. The get-up had been one thing, the wolves another, but in the process of talking to the guys, it appeared he’d removed his goggles, revealing a face full of thick, welted scar tissue and windburn. His gaze flicked to her and Ashley as they approached, and that was what _really_ got her—one eye tracked them with the cold alacrity of a hunter spotting a deer in a clearing while the other, clouded over and almost perfectly white, didn’t do much of anything at all.

She swallowed hard, trying not to make direct eye contract with him _or_ his…pets? Was that what they were? Pets?! They weren’t attacking, so they must’ve been, but still…

Sam made a mental note to thank the others later. If there was one thing her life had been missing up until that point, well gee whiz, she’d have to say it was uncomfortable confrontations with spooky old guys, and wow! The CREEPs were just…_magnets_ for them, weren’t they?! Edgar, Alan, Jack…who was next? Maybe Vincent Price himself would be waiting for them up in the lodge with mugs of hot cocoa.

A pressure near her wrist startled her, and she glanced down to see Ash clutching at her sleeve. She patted her hand lightly and shifted her weight on her feet; she’d only been half-joking about outrunning the boys if push came to shove.

Josh, unsurprisingly, didn’t seem to care in the slightest. “So, what can you tell us about the Blackwood Pines Sanat—”

The man let out a noise that was more growl than groan, reaching over and covering the lens of the camera with his hand. He actually shoved it down towards the ground, sending Chris stumbling to keep his balance. To either side of him, the wolves’ ears went flat. One went so far as to raise its hackles, showing a flash of horrible yellow fangs in the snowy light. “I should’ve _known_—there’s always _some_ group of you fool enough to go poking around where you don’t belong.” He ignored Chris’s protests, keeping his hand firmly on the camera as he looked from one of them to another, searching their faces for…well, _something_, obviously. “Here’s what I know about Blackwood Pines—I know that _none of you_ are gonna go up there. I know that much for _damn certain_.”

Josh hummed thoughtfully. It was a sound they all recognized as meaning one thing and one thing only: a smartass tirade was a’brewing. “Aw geez, well, I do hate to be a contrarian, but we’ve already gone and gotten permission. Filled out all the requisite forms, packed ourselves some snacks, got our big, warm coats out of storage…sooo…” He sucked his teeth, “I think we _are_ gonna go up there, actually.”

“_Permission?!_” the man spat, finally releasing the camera to whirl on Josh. “Permission from _who_, exactly?”

Shoulders squared, Josh almost appeared unaffected. _Almost_. Sam couldn’t help noticing the way his eyes would occasionally flit down to the two massive dogs at the man’s side. “The Washington estate,” he said, painstakingly enunciating every single consonant.

“_Pah!_ The Washingtons don’t own that mountain!”

“I’m sure they’d be shocked to hear that. Especially since, uh, the name and all.” His smile was frosty but no less charming. It seemed to take on a new edge when the stranger’s forehead wrinkled; maybe he was beginning to think Josh looked familiar. “I mean…_Mount Washington_, how much clearer can you get, right?”

Either way, he closed the gap between himself and Josh (the others taking a few abrupt steps backward to compensate), leveling his gaze. “Well I’ll tell you what I tell everyone who comes around here thinking it’ll be good fun to stir up trouble they ain’t got any business in.” He brandished a finger like a bowie knife, his mouth twisting into monstrous shapes with each word, bringing attention to the few front teeth he was missing. “Laugh all you want, ain’t anything to me, but there’s _nothing_ funny about what goes on up on that mountain.” In one fluid move, the finger in Josh’s face was replaced by a thumb jerked over his shoulder. “If you knew the half a’ what men have been brought to do up in that godforsaken place…”

“Well I would _love_ to learn.” The usual persuasion had gone out from his voice only to be replaced by something she recognized as…ugh, yeah, it was the defensive snap. It was unsprung for now, more of a warning, a taste of what was to come, but _boy_ she hoped Josh had enough common sense to keep from getting into an actual fight with a wolf-owning, flamethrower-wielding maniac in the parking lot of a strip mall.

‘Hoped’ was, of course, the operative word in _that_ particular sentence.

Sam felt Chris move beside her. She didn’t turn to look—peeling her eyes away from Fiddler and his wolves felt like a decidedly poor judgment call—but goddamn it, she just _knew_ he was trying to get the camera pointed at him again. Oh, if he and Josh got them killed by this loony old fuck, she was going to haunt the _shit_ out of them…see the views they got on _those_ videos.

“Blackwood Pines is _cursed_,” the stranger continued, undaunted by Josh’s attitude. “Y’hear me? I’ll say it again for you, slower this time. _Cursed_. The dead don’t rest up there, you take it from me. Something about the place twists ‘em, turns ‘em wrong, make ‘em _sour_.”

“A curse,” Josh answered flatly. “Have to be honest with you, sir, that’s sort of why we’re interested—”

“Don’t go meddling with forces beyond your ken, _boy_,” the stranger continued, voice gravelly and grave. “There are things on that mountain that no one—not _you_, not your little _friends_, not the _Washingtons_—are able to comprehend. You leave well enough alone, and you turn right around and go home before you find yourself tangled up in something what never should be seen by the likes of you and yours.”

The curve of Josh’s smirk became a barb. He surprised them all by raising his hands in a clear ‘You got me!’ gesture, taking a single step backwards. The three of them stared on, silent spectators, barely moving even as he nodded in defeat. “Sorry, sorry…you’re probably right. After all, you sure sound like you know your stuff…and _way_ better than anyone else we’ve talked to up here. Between you and me?” he asked, lowering his voice in that friendly, conspiratorial way that more often than not sucked people right into his bullshit, “I got the impression the Washingtons were all sorta uppity assholes, anyway. Anything to make a quick buck or two, am I right?” There was laughter in his tone; there was defiance in his eyes. “So y’know what? Yeah…yeah, I think we’re gonna take your advice.” Josh glanced over to the rest of them, spinning a finger in the air, “Pack it up, team! Change of plans!” He stuck his gloved hand out to the stranger, flinching only slightly when the dogs began to growl. “Sorry again for taking up your _valuable_ time, sir, but _thank you_ for talking with us. It has truly—_truly!_—been an enlightening experience.”

The stranger eyed his hand warily, seemingly more than a bit suspicious. After a long, uncomfortable moment, he took Josh’s hand, giving it a curt pump before releasing it. “You don’t believe me.” His voice was sandpaper even as the corners of his mouth tucked into something she might’ve been tempted to say was meant to be a smile. “That’s fine. That’s just fine. You will. See that you all watch yourselves.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Josh smiled, turning to rejoin the rest of them. “C’mon guys!” And his voice was way too chipper for comfort, making him sound like a throwaway character on some old, wholesome tv show like _Leave it to Beaver_. “Let’s go home. How about…oh, I know, we can go to _my_ place!”

Didn’t need to tell her twice.

Sam was moving long before Josh got the last word out, physically pulling Ashley along with her. She could still feel the stranger’s eyes on their backs, could feel the wolves’ eyes following their legs, no doubt trying to size up the best spot to sink those teeth of theirs into…and so she picked up her pace to try and get the image out of her head.

The headlights of the van flickered once when Chris pressed the button on his key fob, the girls wasting no time in yanking the doors open and sealing themselves away inside the (relative) safety of their makeshift Mystery Machine. Neither of them commented on it, but Sam could see Ash’s breath fogging the window of the passenger seat as she watched Fiddler return to his work of loading up the truck.

“You all saw that too, right?” Chris joked, eyes going comically large behind the foggy lenses of his glasses as he opened the trunk. “I wasn’t like…hallucinating the grungy hermit character from every shitty slasher movie, was I? Because it _kiiinda_ feels like that’s what just happened.” He stowed the camera in he trunk, pausing before shutting it. In the rearview, Sam saw him frown for a second—but only a second. “Sure hope that little run-in wasn’t, uh…”

“Foreshadowing?” Ashley asked flatly, turning away from the window to shoot Josh a furious look once she heard him shut his door. “Yeah. I was just thinking the same.” A second later, she clicked her seatbelt into place, and to Sam at least, the sound felt almost like punctuation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or in other words...
> 
> Fiddler: Mountain's cursed.
> 
> CREEPs: What?
> 
> Fiddler, cocking a shotgun: Mountain's cursed.
> 
> I wanted to take a quick second as we get REAL close to the end of this badboy to preemptively say THANK YOU! When I started writing this dealie, I figured it would just be this jokey little thing...I never, ever imagined the response I've been getting, so I'm totally psyched (and humbled!) that you guys are having fun with this au!!!
> 
> I'm sending all my best thoughts and good vibes your way as we (continue to) deal with these constant changes and uncertainties <3 Please remember to take care of yourselves and each other!!


	16. Pick up the phone.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam says goodbye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait guys! This one turned out CHUNKIER than expected! ;P
> 
> (PLEASE check the very bottom for an important ghostly note!)

Now, she’d known from the moment the trip had been brought up that she was going to be in for something big…but as it turned out, there was a pretty gigantic difference between hearing someone say ‘Yeah, the Washingtons own a mountain’ and staring up towards a snowy peak that loomed miles and miles overhead.

“Wow,” Sam breathed, a tiny puff of fog clouding the air in front of her. “Wow, wow, _wow_.”

Weighed down with an impressive number of bags, Chris snickered as he passed her by, stopping just outside the cable car station. “Pretty solid Owen Wilson impression! Wanna hear mine?”

“_No_,” Ashley and Josh answered in unison.

She hitched her share of the bags higher onto her shoulders and flashed him a teasing grin. “Sounds like the people have spoken.”

“Ugh. You guys are just absolutely _stifling_ my creativity.”

“Tragic, Cochise. Truly, truly tragic. Maybe you’ll be appreciated after your untimely death.”

“Man, a guy can _hope_.”

Her second moment of awe came when the cable car pulled up to the station, its engine clicking and its bulk gentle swinging just past the platform. That’s when she let her eyes trace the massive cables leading up and up through the air, disappearing into what she was pretty sure was a…oh holy shit, was that a _cloud?!_

Normally she wasn’t too bothered by heights, but Christ alive, that was one hell of a climb they were going to be making!

Seemingly catching on to her apprehension, Josh leaned out of the cable car at an impossible angle, no doubt holding onto a handrail or something else she couldn’t see (unless he’d gone and mastered the Michael Jackson _Smooth Criminal_ lean in his spare time and was only waiting until that precise moment to show it off). “Going up?” he drawled, waggling his eyebrows until, finally, she laughed and stepped over the threshold to join them in the car.

In the craziest, most unexpected twist so far, it turned out that…oh God…Chris had been _right_. The car would’ve sat the four of them comfortably, maybe even to the point of being roomy, had it not been for their equipment. With all that shit piled up on the floor, on the seats between them, even on their laps, the ride up the mountain left something to be desired. Thankfully though, despite how old the car had looked, it was only about ten minutes before they heard (and _felt_) the heavy _ker-chunk_ of it locking into place at the summit’s station.

And really, that wasn’t a second too soon, because while it seemed the warnings of the strange man back at the diner had fizzled out of their minds completely, it had only taken a few minutes for them to realize they _all_ had _Baby Shark_ stuck in their heads, and hoo boy.

Some fates were truly worse than death.

Part of Sam had been hopeful that they’d step out of the station and into the lodge, but nope…nope, there was still a considerable path they had to take, tromping through unshoveled paths, crossing a quaint little bridge or two, the snow falling in lazy, fat clumps as they walked. At least it wasn’t _too_ cold. And, if she was being honest, Sam was…kind of in her glory.

Oh, she pretended to grumble when the rest of them did, sure, but it was bullshit. It was _all_ bullshit.

The mountain was _beautiful_. The woods were straight out of an oil painting, the foliage deep green and capped with snow, the frosty air crisp and clear and smelling intensely of pinesap. She couldn’t help feeling that she’d left everything heavy at the base of the mountain: her vertigo, her anxieties about the trip, her odd paranormal encounters, her grief over the twins…and up there, she was just…_free_.

Hell, if it hadn’t been for the pounds of expensive tech she was carting around, she probably would’ve bounded off into the snow like a kid on Christmas morning, running from tree to tree just for the sake of basking in the ambience of the place.

“Holy…” Sam stopped as the path tapered off into a set of stone stairs.

Something jostled her shoulder, and when she turned, Ashley was beaming at her. “Told you so…” she said in an airy singsong, giving her another light nudge before starting up the stairs. The guys, it seemed, already had a head start—they were hunched over the door, muttering to themselves about straight-up kicking the door down if the lock was frozen.

Chris and Josh trying to kick down a door was, admittedly, something she was interested in seeing. In that particular battle of man versus door, Sam had a pretty solid feeling that victory would go to the glorified plank of wood, but…as it turned out, it was a sight she wouldn’t get to see.

Well, not right then, anyway.

As she made it about halfway up the stairs, the door clicked and swung open, the guys congratulating themselves way too loudly for, uh, literally _unlocking a door_ that Josh had the key to.

So these were her friends, huh? She was really about to spend _weeks_ with them.

Alone.

In the woods.

On a mountain.

Maybe not her _best_ judgment call.

The lot of them stomped the snow from their boots in the entryway, and even in that small space Sam was forced to come face-to-face with the reality of their situation. If Blackwood Pines looked impressive on the outside (and it _did_, its dark wood cutting an almost gothic figure against the surrounding woods), then it was downright jaw-dropping on the inside.

Everything was…immaculate. There were beautiful tapestries on the walls, the floors were polished if slightly dusty, each and every piece of furniture fitting together as though they’d been built _specifically_ for the Washingtons to display. Fuck, maybe they _had_ _been!_ She didn’t want to step off the rug in front of the door for fear of messing something up or getting something dirty…but she seemed to be the only one experiencing that hang-up.

“I vote,” Josh began with a long-suffering groan, beginning to untangle the mess of bags hanging from his shoulders and arms, “That we thaw our buns here for a hot sec before going for round two.” He glanced to them, his merry band of nerds, and obviously didn’t see any disagreement. “Ah, fantastic! Love it when we can all come together like this.” Snickering, he jerked his chin towards the next room, “You guys can just dump everything in the great room, yeah? Just put it wherever for now, we can figure shit out tomorrow.” And with that, he set off on his own path, quickly entering a code into a security panel Sam hadn’t noticed until then.

“Uh…great room?” she asked.

“Yeah, well,” Chris said, speaking in that special way of his—the way that told her to brace for a truly godawful joke. He didn’t take his boots off, she noticed, so while every inch of her very soul cringed at the thought of tracking water across those pristine floors, she followed him without slipping out of her own. “I dunno about _great_, but…it’s like, _pretty good_, at least.”

And normally, that was the point where she’d snort a pity laugh his way.

_Normally_.

But there _was_ no normal just then, not when she found herself standing there in the central room of the lodge, surrounded by…shit, where did she even _begin?_

To her left, on the other side of the sprawling room, was a plush, cushy sectional that could probably hold ten or more people if they really crammed in. Across from it, mounted to the wall, was a flatscreen tv big enough to make the prospect of cramming together rather enticing. Past it, a baby grand piano glimmered in the light of so many floor-to-ceiling windows, its dust cloth pulled half away as though to entice passersby to go and tickle the ivories. The back wall was lined by doors that led, no doubt, to other rooms, other massively breathtaking places that she couldn’t wait to check out. A console table running nearly the length of it was artfully decorated with framed photographs of the Washingtons—Josh, his parents, the twi…hmm. Well. She could come back to that later. When she was feeling more up to it. Moving on, to her right, a staircase the likes of which you might find in a romance novel reached upwards while also looping around itself to hint at the floor below them. The place was _huge_. And it was beautiful.

But what caught her attention, what _really_ made her feel like a visitor in the world’s coziest art museum, wasn’t what was on the walls or the floors, it wasn’t the photographs or the doors open just enough to whet her curiosity…oh no, what really got her was what was _above_ them.

From the high, vaulted ceiling, a gargantuan sculpture hung in the air. Sam had never been one for modern or abstract art or whatever, so she couldn’t say with any certainty that she ‘got it,’ per se, but it was gorgeous in its own strange way. To her, it sort of looked like a giant ball of loose yarn, only the yarn was metal. Maybe it was some sort of commentary on the…permanence…of…wool?

Yeah, again. Modern art? Not really her thing.

“You just gonna stand there slack-jawed all break, Sammy?”

She shook herself out of her thoughts in time to help Josh remove a few of her bags, carefully setting them on the floor even as he continued to tease her.

“Looking like one of those turkeys that drown themselves ‘cuz they can’t stop staring at the rain.”

“That’s not a real thing!” Ashley sighed, stacking a few boxes onto the coffee table in front of the huge L-shaped couch.

He turned to favor her with an expression Sam could only describe as ‘withering.’ “Y’know. For a ghost hunter—”

“_Paranormal researcher_.”

“—you sure are a goddamn spoilsport, Ash.”

They spent the better part of an hour showing her around the lodge, starting by climbing the stairs to the top floor to point out the swankiness of the bathrooms and some of the um, more _creative_ bedrooms (“And this is the antler room…” Chris had said, sweeping an arm out to usher Sam inside. She’d blinked, perplexed, walking through the door with an uncertain smile. “Why’s it called the antl—oh my _God!_”). From there, they circled back down to the main floor, ‘ooh’ing and ‘ahh’ing over the lavish kitchen, the dining room, the fireplaces, the paintings, the many, many…many couches (“Why does your family have such a weird obsession with sitting?” “Look, don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.”). A quick visit to the cinema room downstairs rounded it all off, and by the time they were done, everyone felt warm and well-rested enough to make the trip back down the mountain for the rest of their gear.

“You sure you’re good lugging that thing around like that?”

Sam snorted, blowing a short burst of breath upwards to ruffle her hair out of her face. She braced herself before hoisting the box up from the floor of the cable car, giving it a moment to settle in her arms. “Yeah, I’m cool! It’s not that heavy, really, just sort of awkward.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards into a snarky grin. “I was kinda talking about _Josh_, but…”

From beside her, Josh uttered a low, sardonic laugh, punctuating the sound by flipping Ash the bird. “Here—if you’re gonna be a wiseass, let yourself into the lodge.” There was a soft metallic jingling as he lobbed the keys in Ash’s direction, and even Sam had to admit she was a little impressed that she actually managed to catch them. “Maybe crank the heat if you get the chance, huh? Maybe, uh…” he straightened up with his own pile of boxes, “Maybe while _we’re _doing the heavy lifting, you and Cochise can get all nice and _toasty_ on—”

“Okay bye!” She was gone in a flash. Quicker than a flash, really, little more than a grey-blue blur in the snow as she scurried off to join Chris on the trail, leaving Sam and Josh to laugh to themselves.

“Wayyy too easy…” he chuckled, closing the door to the cable car with his foot. He gave her a joking little bow, letting her leave the station first, and followed close behind. “Wanna hear my _nefarious_ plan for our time up here?”

Sam didn’t even try not to laugh. “Oh God, here it comes…”

“One by one,” Josh began, proving a suspicion she’d had—namely that he would’ve told her his ‘nefarious’ plan no matter what, “I’m going to very conveniently _lose_ the keys to all the bedrooms. It’s gonna be like an Agatha Christie novel. Every night, another couple rooms are just closed off, whoops, too bad, so sad…until finally, those two dweebs are gonna be _forced_ to stop being babies and share a fucking bed.”

She hummed in thought for a moment. “Are you accepting constructive criticism for that plan?”

The sigh Josh heaved was so loud, so unnecessarily dramatic, that it scared a few birds from a nearby tree. “I don’t see what could _possibly_ be improved, but sure. Shoot.”

“Couches,” she said simply. “For some reason, you’re forgetting the like. Thirty couches I counted during our tour. Why wouldn’t they just sleep on the couches?”

For once in his life, it seemed Josh didn’t have a response in the chamber. He went quiet as they made their way down the path to the lodge, and at least for a time, the only sound around them was the crunching of the snow under their boots. When the very topmost peak of the roof appeared on the horizon, he made a triumphant sound. “Got it!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Josh nodded, going uncharacteristically somber as he readjusted his grip on the boxes. “Gonna have to burn ‘em.”

“Josh.”

“Nope. It’s the only logical thing, Sammy. Gonna have to burn those couches.”

“Oh my God.”

“No, look! Like you said—we got plenty to go around, right? So what’s like…ten or fifteen in the grand scheme of things? Think of the bonfire! We can roast hot dogs—I’m sorry, _veggie dogs_—tell scary stories, talk about our hopes and dreams…”

Laughing while holding onto the box felt particularly dangerous, but she couldn’t help herself. “Uh huh. Perfect. You really figured it out, I guess.”

“You know what they say: If you wanna make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs. So if you think about it, it kinda tracks that if you wanna get two nerds to make out, you gotta burn a few couches.”

“Deep.”

“Right? I sure thought so.”

Her breath plumed out into another huge cloud as they walked. If she squinted, she could already see two vaguely blue blobs heading up the stairs to the lodge. So much for them rushing ahead to turn the heat on, huh? Ah well. That’s what they _all_ deserved for not flipping it on earlier, she supposed. Live and learn.

The snow continued to crunch, crunch, crunch, their boots leaving deep imprints in the powder. The sky was already beginning to turn a darker grey, the sun blotted out by thick clouds pregnant with what she was sure would prove to be even more snow. They were probably in for a bit of a storm.

“Hey, so…” This wasn’t exactly how she’d planned on broaching the subject, but it was the first time that day they’d had any sort of privacy. Unless she wanted to wait until Chris and Ash were asleep, this was probably going to be her best shot. “You sure you’re…okay? Being back up here and everything?”

Josh was quiet for a beat. Then he sighed, turning to meet her eyes for a moment before focusing on the boxes in his arms again. “Trip was my idea, Sammy.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Uh huh. It was your _idea_, but actually being _up here_—”

“It’s…” he interrupted her, “…it’s _weird_.” His mouth tightened into a line, “Definitely _weird_.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s okay. I’m okay.” His jacket made a rustling sound when he turned her way one more time. “How, uh…how ‘bout you? Hangin’ in there?”

Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug made unsteady by what she was carrying. “I guess so. It’s…well, like you said, it’s mostly just…_weird_.”

When they reached the base of the lodge’s stairs, Ashley and Chris were nowhere to be seen, probably having already made their way inside. Sam took a second to rest her arms, setting the box down on the bottommost stair, stretching and rolling her shoulders out to prepare for the trek up.

“Look, once you see the sanatorium, last year’s gonna be like, the _farthest_ thing from your mind.” Josh set his stuff down as well, taking a page out of her book and shaking his arms out. “There’s an emergency access tunnel that leads under the lodge so even though it’s a helluva walk, at least we can do it _indoors_. And there are some dollies and carts and shit in the basement we can load up to make it easier. Place is right out of a Stephen King novel, you’re gonna absolutely _flip_.”

She snorted, “Are you trying to tell me it’s going to be better than Conrad’s Mummy Manor?”

Josh sucked his teeth in exasperation. “Yeah, right? Go figure. Who woulda ever thought _anything_ could top that?”

Sam stretched her arms out even further than before, groaning at the effort until finally, blissfully, she let them fall to her sides again. “You know, now that I’ve had a little time to really let it just stew in my head…”

“Yeah-huh?”

“I feel like I’m noticing another hitch in your brilliant plan to set those two up.” She set her arms akimbo, tapping one boot against the ground, “Correct me if I’m wrong, here, but you said your plan was to lock the rooms one by one?”

“And hide the keys,” he agreed with a nod. “Considering I’m the only one who knows all the best hiding spots in this badboy, I figured—”

She held a hand up to keep him from going on. “So eventually, what I’m hearing is that, in addition to _Chris and Ash_ having to share a room…” Sam let her voice rail off as she raised her eyebrows, toes still tapping, gaze expectant.

As she watched, Josh looked from one side to the other then back to her again, eyes going comically wide. “I—oh. Oh no.” He pressed both hands flush against his chest, slowly shaking his head. “I know how this looks, Sammy—”

“Uh huh.”

“I do. I, oh wow. Oh geez. Oh man. Oh boy. Wow. Let me just assure you, I would never—_ever_—try to pull anything like that with—”

Two quick steps and she crossed the distance between them, reaching up and yanking the brim of his beanie down over the top half of his face.

“Okay, mature,” Josh said flatly, all traces of his earlier smartassery gone. “Here I am, trying to orchestrate a fun and enjoyable break for all of you, my dearest friends, my bosom buddies, and this is what I get for tryi—”

Though she sighed through her nose, Sam couldn’t help but smile. She quickly (_very_ quickly) popped up onto the balls of her feet, effectively shutting him up by placing a brief (_very_ brief) peck to his lips.

It worked like magic. Josh promptly stopped talking, his usual smirk creeping its way across the lower half of his face. He went to say something, but…

“Uhhh…guys?”

Even with the brim of his beanie pulled down as it was, Sam could sense the way Josh rolled his eyes into a ‘oh boy, here we go’ expression. “Uhhh…Cochise?” he teased.

“Could you, uh…I think you…hey, just get up here?”

At that, Josh flipped the brim of his hat up, brow furrowed. “Uh…okay?” He gave Sam a look before grabbing his pile of shit and heaving it into his arms, carefully making his way up the icy stairs.

Sam followed suit, laughing quietly under her breath until she stepped back into the lodge. Then she didn’t feel much like kidding around. Not at all. It was a miracle she didn’t drop what she was holding as she walked into the entryway, running smack-dab into the other three. “What…” she started, setting her stuff onto the ground. A second later, she cut herself off with an abrupt jerk.

Something was wrong.

Something…but _what?_

She frowned and looked around the foyer, only sort of aware that she’d folded her arms across herself. It was cold in the lodge, absolutely, so that was probably it, and still—

“Where the _fuck_ is our stuff?!”

Her eyes snapped to Josh before focusing on the room with a newfound clarity.

Fuck. Oh _fuck_.

All of the bags, boxes, and other shit they’d carted up on their first trip were just…gone. Totally and completely. There was nothing left behind except for a few faint patches where the thin layer of dust had been disturbed on the floor.

“What the _fuck_,” Josh repeated, storming ahead of them to charge straight into the great room. He’d tugged his hat off and thrown it onto a decorative side table, a couple corkscrew cowlicks sticking up from the back of his head.

“Oh no. Oh nonononono…” Ashley shook her head and shrunk against the doorjamb with huge, worried eyes. “Mm-mm. Nope. No way.”

“Ash, shut up—”

“Someone’s in here.”

Sam blinked, unclenching the fists she hadn’t realized she’d made. “You mean like…a…uh…like a presence?”

“Wh—no, I don’t mean a presence! I mean like _an intruder! _Holy moly, Sam!”

“No one’s in here.” After searching the great room, Josh took a few deliberate steps back into the entryway, apparently with the sole intention of smacking the back of Chris’s head.

“_Augh!_ Dude! What’s your problem?!”

“Ha ha. Hiii-larious, Hartley. Where’d you put our shit?”

He blinked at him for a beat, the anger in his face melting into confusion…then insult. “Uh. Excuse you? I didn’t touch anything!”

“Oh bullshit.”

“I was on the cable car _with_ you! What, you think I _teleported_ myself over here just to rub my grubby mitts on—”

“You get how expensive that stuff is, right? You get that? If you’re gonna try and pull the funnyman shtick, maybe do it with your own cheap-ass toys, okay?”

“I-I-I didn’t—Ash was _with me!_” Chris turned away from him to look at the girls instead, and while his gaze only landed on Sam for a fraction of a second, his expression was easy enough to read: Can you believe this guy?!

“Hey, uh, as much as I _really_ don’t want it to be the case…” Sam’s eyes continued to move around what parts of the floor they could see from the entrance. When had she lowered her voice? Shit. “My money’s on Ash’s theory right now.”

“Jesus Christ. Come _on_.”

“_Thank you!_”

She slowly shook her head. “There’s no way Chris could move _all_ that stuff with his like, ten second lead. He’s not exactly an athlete.”

“Yeah! I…wait, hey!”

“Could anyone get in here?” she asked Josh. Her mind, traitorous and cruel, had gotten itself stuck on the image of crazy old Jack Fiddler and his slobbering dogs. “We didn’t check the windows or any other doors or—”

Wordlessly, he pointed to the security panel. He walked up to it, entered the code she’d seen him type in before, and then he slammed its cover shut. “No. You really think my parents wouldn’t have this place locked the fuck down? There’s no intruder—”

Ashley flung her arms out towards the great room, speaking in the same stage whisper Sam had taken on. “Then where’s the stuff?!”

“I don’t know, Ash, but it’s not—”

The silence of the lodge gave way to the horrendous, ear-splitting cacophony of radio static, causing all four of them to jump out of their skin like startled cats. They stopped just short of tumbling into one another like the _Scooby-Doo_ gang, but even then it was a close call.

“…is that the…”

“Spirit box,” Chris answered flatly from somewhere just behind Sam. “Yeah, that’s sure what it sounds like.”

“The spirit box is in its bag,” Josh snapped, “It’s not gonna just turn on when it’s zipped up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a _better_ explanation for that sound, or…?”

Sam felt her throat turn to sandpaper. In the span of half a second, everything she thought she’d left at the base of the mountain came rushing back to her in one cold wave, lapping at her ankles before surging, soaking her up to her collarbone in the frothy waters of understanding. She remembered her last interaction with the spirit box. She remembered what it had said.

It was starting to look like the sanatorium _wouldn’t_ be the ghostly hotspot they’d been hoping for, after all.

It was starting to look like maybe...just maybe...they’d already arrived.

She took a step, then two, then three, separating herself from the rest of the group. After a beat, someone (probably Ashley) grabbed her by the wrist, but she kept walking, dragging them along with her.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m going to look for it.” She didn’t think it would be that hard of a mystery to solve; the moment she stepped into the great room, it became apparent that the noise was coming from downstairs. “I think…we’re _supposed_ to go look for it.”

“Suppo—literally what are you talking about?” she heard Chris ask. “_Supposed_ to?”

“Mhm,” she hummed, approaching the stairs with ginger footsteps. “I think, um…” It was only then that she paused, realizing with another start that it hadn’t been Ashley to grab her, but _Josh_. Wide-eyed, she gave him a look, pulling in a long, deep, steadying breath. “I think it wants us to,” she said slowly.

“_It?_” Chris parroted, “_It?!_ You aren’t…oh for the love of _Christ_, you guys! A-a-are you about to actually tell me you think this is like…” He threw his arms into the air and let them drop to his sides again. Shaking his head, he began to laugh, trying to find some measure of commiseration on Ash’s face. “There’s probably a fucking _burglar_ in here, and _you two_ want to go traipsing—”

“A mountaintop burglar,” Josh deadpanned.

“Well I don’t know! I don’t know, but it makes more sense than like…_ghosts did it!_ I—wait, wait, hold on, what the f…don’t just _leave me up here!_”

Just like that, it was settled. The four of them anxiously made their way down the stairs, creeping down the same path they’d taken earlier during their grand tour. The air felt different, somehow, as though the cold of the lodge wasn’t due to disuse, but instead warning. That thought, much like the sculpture in the great room, didn’t quite sit right in Sam’s head, though it felt close enough to the truth for her to leave it where it lay.

And with each step they took, the horrible flickering sound of the spirit box grew closer and closer, louder and louder still until it was almost unbearable. There were noises that resembled syllables, momentary blips in the signal that could’ve been voices, but in the echo chamber of the lodge, trying to make sense of it was a job easier said than done…especially over the near-constant soundtrack of Ashley muttering, “I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I really, really don’t like this…”

Sam wasn’t the first to peer into the cinema room—that duty fell to Josh, the de facto owner of the place. Still, she knew by the way his expression changed that her suspicion had been correct. She steeled herself before poking her head into the doorway…and felt the blood leave her face in a sheet anyway.

There, set on the overstuffed viewing chairs neatly as could be, was their stuff. All of it. Everything they’d carted up the mountain on their first trip sat stacked on the cushions in perfect pyramids, creating strange silhouettes in the darkness of the theater, as though they were surrounded by people waiting for the show to start.

At the very front of the room, placed at the base of the screen, was the spirit box. It continued to scream at them in its disquieting way, the radio stations flicking from one to another in rapid succession, broken only by the occasional vowel sound or staccato screech.

“This…is…_so_ effed up…”

“Thanks Cochise. Glad I can always count on you in times of strife, my man.”

What possessed her to do it, she couldn’t say, but Sam briskly strode into the room, weaving her way around the seats until she made it to the spirit box, turning it off with one flick of the dial. She didn’t let herself linger there, instead turning right around and hurrying to join them in the hallway, her breath coming in hard pans, as though she’d run a mile. “Okay,” she said, shocked at how steady her voice sounded in her head, “Okay, okay…I vote…we leave.”

“Seconded,” Ashley said without missing a beat.

“Yup,” Josh agreed. “Leaving sounds pretty sweet, actually.”

“What about the stuff?” Chris hissed, his tone suggesting that while he was unnerved, he hadn’t yet reached their level of outright panic.

Ashley smacked his arm with an unimportant sound, most of the blow cushioned by the fluff of his parka. “Forget the _stuff_, dummy! Something’s really, really wrong here.” She looked at them for a moment, then quickly turned on her heel, scampering back up the stairs towards the great room.

When they reached the landing, though…

Oh.

When they reached the landing.

“Okay, you know what? No. Nuh-uh. Screw you guys. Is this supposed to be some kinda funny prank or something?” Chris turned away from the sight of Ash’s spirit board laid out on the ground, fixing both Sam and Josh with a disbelieving grin. “Ha ha, okay, you got us! Real funny. You _almost_ had me going there for a sec, but—”

“Cochise,” Josh said, his voice eerily atonal. He stepped around him, going so far as to reach out and push him slightly to the side to clear a better path. “I will be the first to admit this looks…_exactly_ like something I’d do, but uh…” He joined Ashley in the great room, the two of them staring down at the board on the floor, the shadow of the hanging sculpture directly overhead tattooing it with odd swirls. A small sound escaped him, a sound bordering on hysteria, Sam thought. “I have…_no idea_…what’s going on right now.”

And then the board’s pointer began to spin.

“That’s not funny,” Ashley said, face the color of old milk as she stared down at the spirit board. “This is absolutely _not funny_.” The planchette spun and spun and spun…before whipping around in such a way that its point was aimed at her feet. “_Josh_.”

Sam didn’t turn, too riveted by what was happening on the floor to look away, but in her periphery, Josh seemed grey as death itself.

“_It’s not me_.” There was a thick quality to his voice that she’d never heard before. It was like his tongue had frozen to the bottom of his mouth.

Ashley didn’t immediately respond. She just stared at the planchette with the whites of her eyes showing, hands clutching desperately at the chain of her necklace. The planchette remained motionless under her gaze…for the time being, at least. Her throat visibly flexed with the effort of swallowing. “If you guys think this—”

All at once, it burst to life again, the wooden pointer positively _flying_ across the board in mad zigzags, causing all four of them to shout.

“_Fuck _me!” Chris sputtered, stumbling backwards in surprise, tripping over his own bootlaces to land flat on his ass.

A shockwave seemed to ripple through the lodge, a silent sonic boom that sent the other three toppling to the ground, robbing the strength from their legs and turning their muscles to jelly.

At the impact, Sam gasped so hard it hurt, legs scrambling in a crazed crab-walk to push herself as far from the board as she could. Her back jammed into something hard, maybe the side of the couch, maybe an end table, stopping her from fleeing. When she looked up, she realized something: They’d each fallen in such a way that they surrounded the board. One of them per side. But…but that didn’t make any sense, not with the way they’d been standing at the mouth of the stairs. How had they…how did…

Neither Josh nor Ashley moved, both still gawping at what was happening in front of them. Had Sam been paying more attention to them and less to the nonsensical physics at play, she might’ve noticed the movements of their eyes—the way they tracked the planchette’s path. They mouthed the same letters, but it was Ashley who managed to find her voice first, to speak first, to put _word_ to the horrible susurrus, and in a way, didn’t that make perfect sense? She was their psychic medium, wasn’t she? It was _her_ board.

“Si-sis…sister? Sister? Sister!” She whirled on Josh from where she sat, mouth wide open, no longer in fear, but something else…something more like anger. “_Sister?!_”

A pathetic little choking noise came from Josh’s throat. He shook his head, slowly at first, then faster, until it became nearly frantic. “This isn’t me. This _isn’t_ me!”

“None of us…_have_…_sisters!_” Oh yeah. That was anger. It might’ve even been worse than anger, _deeper_, in some way. It could’ve very easily been _fury_. She reached across the board and made a grab for the front of his shirt, but he lurched away from her, his shock morphing into indignation.

“This isn’t _me_, Ash! Why the _fuck_ would I—”

“It’s not funny, Josh!”

“Am I laughing?! Do you see me laughing right now?!”

From where he sat sprawled on the hardwood, Chris jawed at the air. A bunch of almost-words came out of him—syllables that didn’t match or piece together in quite the right way. “Th-th-there’s an explanation,” he mumbled, speech slushy with confusion. “It’s, it’s, uh…_shit_.”

“Hands!” They all jumped again, Josh’s shout rattling the huge metal sculpture hanging right over their heads. “Hands _up! Now!_”

Acting more out of instinct than obedience, Sam did just that, showing her bare palms to the rest of the circle. She looked to each side of the board, chest tightening.

Because Josh’s hands? Empty.

Ash’s hands? Also empty.

Chris’s hands? Fucking. Empty.

The realization seemed to wash over them all at precisely the same instant.

“Oh my God,” Ashley whispered, clapping her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my _God_…”

“Someone else has to be in the house.” Chris had gotten his voice back, it seemed, but he was speaking strangely, his words rushing out of him like he was on the verge of puking down the front of his shirt. “Someone’s fucking with us. Gotta be.”

“Could someone get in here?” Sam hissed, crawling slowly forward on her knees. “I thought you said there was an alarm system? Could someone get past that? Disable the—”

Between them, the planchette went still once more.

“Fingers on the pointer.” Josh said it firmly. So firmly, in fact, that Sam did it before she realized what was happening. After a moment, Chris leaned over and did the same. He didn’t move except to set one of his own fingers on the planchette, but Josh directed his voice at Ashley. “No chickening out now, kiddo.”

“I am _not_—”

“Your board. Your séance.” He _did_ turn his head, then, fixing her with a look Sam couldn’t make out from her position. It must’ve been a doozy, though, if Ash’s expression was anything to go by.

Her eyes suddenly seemed wetter than usual. “Think about this, Josh,” she said quietly, bright spots of color blooming in the pits of her cheeks and tip of her nose, giving her a manic, feverish air.

“Now, Ash.”

“Chris and Sam are right. Someone _has_ to be—”

“_Now_, Ash.”

Ashley looked to Chris (who shrugged), then to Sam (who _also_ shrugged), and then, tentatively, _apprehensively_, lowered her first two fingers onto the planchette. She simply blinked for a moment.

“No one asks questions but Ash.” Josh sounded like a fucking robot, words clipped and jagged, eyes fixed on the viewfinder. “And no one leaves the circle.”

“What…what do I ask…?”

Between them, the planchette began to zoom from one side of the board to the other, no longer zigging and zagging, but instead moving in great, long arcs. Sam tried not to cringe away. The thing felt _alive_ under her finger, pulsing just out of sync with her heartbeat.

No one said a word.

And then, Josh spoke up, his eyes wrought to the board. “Which sister?”  
  
“Josh.”

“Ask it _which sister_, Ashley,” he snapped back. Sam thought she could see sweat beginning to bead at his hairline, and that couldn’t be right, could it? The lodge was so cold they could see their breath.

She eyed him for a second longer before pulling in a deep breath. “Um…okay.” A sliver of Ash’s tongue poked out to wet her lips. “Which sister…are you?”

Sam’s hands were shaking so hard that she could no longer tell the difference between the jagged jitters of the planchette and her own trembling fingers. If there hadn’t been a gasp from one of the others, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the thing moving at all.

The planchette slid to the top row of letters.

It juddered abruptly to one side.

Its glass eye showed one letter: B.

“Beth,” Sam breathed.

“Beth?” Josh echoed.

Again the planchette zipped across the board, growing still only once it had fallen over YES.

There was a beat of silence. Sam wrenched her gaze from the board to see Chris and Ashley sharing a strange, wide-eyed look among themselves.

Oh _shit_. Had she and Josh not filled them in on the whole ‘knowing the twins’ thing?!

Well this was about to be _super_ confusing for the two of them.

“Hey Beth…” Chris said slowly, sounding like someone who’d just been walked in on doing something embarrassing. “How’s it goi—_ow!_” He shut up when Ash elbowed him in the side.

“Um, uh…” Taking another deep breath, Ashley seemed to finally fully settle into her role of their medium for the night. “Hi Beth…” she said quietly. “Not to be…_rude_…or anything…but, uh, why are you _here?_ Not like, the lodge-here, I mean, but—okay, yeah, the lodge, but also just like—”

“This earthly coil?”  
  
“Chris! Shut up!”

“I’m sorry! We’re…we’re all just acting like this is _normal shit_. We’re all just _accepting_ that we’re talking to a—”

“_Shut up!_”

The planchette wobbled, stopped, wobbled again. For a reason she couldn’t quite place, it made Sam think of the ‘…’ that showed up when someone was typing a text. Wiggle wiggle, stop. Wiggle wiggle, stop. Like Beth wasn’t sure, like the question was too complicated for her to answer.

Sam grimaced, hunching closer to the board. It wasn’t the question she _wanted_ to ask, but…it was the question that had been on her mind ever since her conversation with Dr. Hill. “Ask if this has anything to do with, uh…” Hoo boy. No time like the present. “Just. Ask if this is because I kissed Josh.”

“Is this because Sam—wait, you wh—”

“You guys _kissed?!_”

Oops.

Hadn’t filled them in on that either, huh?

Man, they really had to work on their communication skills.

Under their hands, the planchette burst to life again, zooming from one side of the board to the other to spell out one short, succinct response.

E-W.

“Wow. Thanks sis,” Josh said flatly. “Super cool.” He tried to smirk, Sam thought, maybe even tried to force out a nervous laugh, though neither really happened with any measure of success. Instead, he pulled his upper lip into his mouth, gnawing at it for a second before looking to Ashley. “Ask if she’s pissed.”

Chris turned to him, “Pissed? Why would you think she’s pissed? Just because you were—apparently—secretly mackin’ on Sam?”

Josh’s hand, the one that wasn’t on the pointer, moved up to absently rub at the faded nick on his forehead where the rock had hit him back in the corn maze. “Call it a fuckin’ _hunch_, Cochise.”

“Are you angry?” Ashley asked the air, blinking dumbly when the planchette zipped to NO.

Next to her, Josh’s body seemed to sag with relief.

Another moment passed, but before Ashley could ask any sort of follow-up question, the planchette shot off, jerking from one letter to the next. “N-O-T-M-E,” Ash read under her breath. “‘Not me?’” She looked between the rest of them. “What do you mean, not you?” A quiet gasp escaped her as her arm was taken on another ride. “U-N-F-I-N-I—unfinished? Unfinished business?” The planchette didn’t go still, but it stopped spelling, instead turning in lazy circles under their fingers. “You have…unfinished business here? What unfinished business?”

Nothing.

They waited and waited…then waited some more, occasionally glancing at each other as their arms kept moving in those slow, repetitive circles.

Clearing her throat, Ashley tried again. “Beth? If you’re still with us, um…what’s keeping you here?”

In one smooth, chopping motion, the pointer spelled yet another word.

“‘_Angry?’_” Sam felt her voice catch in her throat. “But sh—” And then, though she didn’t know _why_, exactly, she looked away from the board and tilted her head up towards the ceiling instead; it was as though some part of her brain expected to see Beth there, hanging from the metal sculpture like a kid trying to skin the cat on a set of playground monkey bars. “You said you weren’t mad! Why—”

There were shouts from each of the other sides of the board as the planchette seemingly wrenched _itself_ out from underneath their fingers, whipping itself into a frenzy as they watched. It moved so quickly that for a second, it was almost impossible to make out what it was spelling. But when she leaned closer, she caught it.

O-T-M-E-N-O-T-M-E-N-O-T-M-E-N-O-T-M-E-N-O-T-M-E-N-O

“Jesus Christ!” Chris pulled away from the board, scuttling back in surprise.

“Oooh no,” Ash added, “No way. No _way!_”

Sam whirled around, met Josh’s eyes, and saw something like dawning realization there. That was good. It was good because it meant she wasn’t the only one who’d begun to piece the horrible story together. It was good, but there was no _relief_ in it. Not when she thought she knew what would be coming next.

Still, she braced herself, looking up to the ceiling again. “Hannah?”

In her pocket, her phone began to ring on full volume.

All four of them _shrieked_ as if they’d been burned, whirling around to the source of the noise, only…Ash’s phone started ringing too. And Chris’s phone. And Josh’s.

One by one they pulled them from their pockets, each one lit up with an incoming call, their screens illuminating the rough circle they’d formed around the board. The four of them stared at one another as the planchette finally went still, the racket of their discordant ringtones filling the great room like the echoes of their screams.

She didn’t know why she felt so inclined to do it, and she sure didn’t know how she _managed_, but Sam somehow tore her eyes away from the others’, her nostrils flaring from the effort, from the terror, until her gaze fell onto her phone. No part of her wanted to do it. Not a single, solitary brain cell. How _could _she, when she already knew what she would see? It was clear as day in her mind: ‘Incoming call from…Hannah,’ it would say in big, brilliant letters. ‘Answer?’

But it didn’t.

No, her screen (_all_ of their screens, she suspected) simply read ‘Unknown.’

And _motherfucker!_ That was _so much worse!!_

“Don’t.” She looked up to see Josh pointing a warning finger in her direction before turning it to Chris, then Ashley. “_Don’t_,” he repeated, speaking in a low, frantic whisper that somehow managed to be perfectly audible despite their ringing phones.

“Josh…”

“_No_. Just…don’t.” His eyes dropped to his own phone, to that menacing ‘Unknown’ at the top of the screen. “Ignore it and it’ll stop.”

“But Josh, what if—”

“_Ignore it_,” he said, much firmer that time. “It’ll go away if you just _ignore it_.”

And, to his credit…it did. One more ring, two, and then their phones went quiet. Not one at a time, but all at once. It left them in silence. Silence that was almost perfect—_would’ve_ been perfect, really, had it not been for the odd, uncomfortable whining noise Sam couldn’t place. It didn’t seem to be coming from any of them, but it certainly wasn’t coming from the board either…

The four of them looked at one another, each of their faces a mask of some familiar iteration of dread. Ash’s eyes were wide with horror, Chris’s brow was tightly knit with disbelief, Josh’s face was pale with shock, and as for her? Well…Sam couldn’t say with any certainty since it was, uh, _her face_, but she had a feeling she would’ve been just as goggle-eyed and grey as any of them.

Slowly though, very slowly, she found her attention drawn back to the board. It was like someone had snuck magnets into her eyes, and now she was helpless to do anything but stare at it; if her gaze strayed for even a second, the board pulled it right back. “Should…should we…?” she began.

One by one they _all _looked to the board, watching the pointer once more begin to make those perfect, scratchy circles across its surface. The odd whining noise grew louder, becoming a disembodied moan in the air.

“Um…um, yeah. Yeah, right, okay.” Ashley reached up, nervously tugging her beanie down further over her ears as she collected herself. “Beth, you should—”

Whatever she’d meant to say, whatever TLC-level, internet-ghost-show bullcrap she was going to start reciting from her internal script, none of them would ever know. Without warning, the planchette launched itself from the floor, clipping her full across the mouth, causing her to yell out and clap her hands over her face.

Chris sprung to his knees in a mad (if not clumsy) bid to get up. “Ash!”

“_Shit-fuck!_”

Sam wasn’t positive what happened next, but once the_ literal_ dust cleared, she found herself lying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. What she saw there didn’t immediately make sense—there was a ragged hole in the vaulted ceiling, a hole that appeared just a little too much like a giant, blank eye staring down at them, occasionally raining chips of plaster and paint like the fat snowflakes they’d walked through outside. Her ears rang as though a bomb had gone off right beside her, and…

‘What are you doing?’ she meant to ask Josh when she spotted him lying next to her, one of his arms holding her down flat. What actually came out of her mouth was closer to “Huhbuh?”

Any illusion of it being a (decidedly bizarre) romantic advance was shattered when she spotted Chris on Josh’s other side, similarly pinned to the floor.

“Shit,” Josh said, sounding five steps past terrified, now. “Shishit_shit!_ What the _fuck?!_”

She managed to unhook his arm from her chest, sitting up to see—oh.

_Oh_.

There, right where they’d been sitting only a second ago, was the sculpture. It had plunged itself _into_ the floorboards, crunching through them as if they’d been made of balsa wood and not thick, polished oak. It laid there, a tangle of steel, an indescribably threatening semicircle gleaming in the light.

Shock of shocks, she spotted Ash and her spirit board safe and sound on the other side.

Uh…_safe_, at least. She and the board were safe.

‘Sound’ remained to be seen.

“Holy shit…” Chris was the next one to sit up, his face going impossibly pale when he realized what had just happened—what had _almost_ just happened.

Josh was the last one up and the first one moving, scrambling up and over the couch with the practiced ease of someone who’d been doing it their whole life. “_Goddamn_…Ash?” Sam heard him say. “Ash? You with us?”

Chris offered Sam his hand and she took it, letting him help her to her feet. She kept he eyes on Josh and Ashley across the way, though, watched him bend over to check on her as she sat there, both hands covering her face.

Oh God, was she hurt? Like _actually_ hurt?! The rock in the maze had been one thing, the horrible case of hives another, but _this?!_ Sending a mass of metal crashing down from the ceiling? Trying to _crush_ them? That was…that was something else.

“What?” Josh said, hunkering into a squat as he talked to Ashley. “I can’t hear you. Just—shit, Ash, just move your hands! Show me where you’re hurt.”

The lodge was almost entirely silent now that there was no menacing whine, no scritch-scratch of the planchette on the board, so even though her voice was low, Sam was able to hear Ash murmur, “—away.”

“What? Seriously, move your hands—”

“_Ignore it_,” slithered a voice that was only partially Ash’s, “_And it’ll go away._”

She had only a moment to grapple with the horrifying knowledge that she knew that voice, _recognized_ that voice, and then Josh was _in the goddamn air_, sailing towards them like they’d set out to play a game of Frisbee golf and he’d _seriously_ misunderstood the rules.

Miraculously, both she and Chris managed to jump aside in time to keep from being bowled over, and…okay, it was really only ‘miraculous’ for them. For Josh, it was probably a little less than ideal. He tumbled ass over teakettle, landing on the runner just beyond them with a dull thud and a muffled, “_Ourgh!_”

“Oh my God! Are you okay?!” She’d knelt down to help him up, but Josh scrabbled his way onto his hands and knees all on his own, shaking his head furiously.

“We got a problem.” Something about the way he said it was…wrong. Too calm. Too casual. It was the sort of blasé tone that usually signaled he was very, very intrigued by whatever was going down and just didn’t want anyone else to catch on, but…his eyes didn’t match. He didn’t point, instead simply turning towards Ash again, and when he did, Sam saw Chris turn with him. Then _his_ face changed.

Sam swallowed hard around the lump growing in her throat, and when she turned to join them, she realized what it was that she’d seen in Josh’s eyes a moment ago.

At first, she’d thought it was fear. Fear made sense, right? But that wasn’t it. That absolutely was. Not. It.

And she knew that with perfect clarity, because when _she_ saw Ashley standing there on the other side of the fallen sculpture, blood dripping down her chin from a busted lip, eyes perfectly black, perfectly demonic, ringed by running mascara and smudged eyeliner, there was only one thing _she_ was feeling.

“Oh come _on!_” Sam half-groaned, half-shouted into the empty lodge. “Are you _shitting me?!_”

A second later, Ash vaulted herself over the wreckage of the sculpture with a snakelike fluidity that set her teeth on edge. It was as though she was all sinew, all cartilage, and she landed on her feet on their side of the living room with a cat’s grace. Her breaths were sharp, juddering, the sound of someone about to burst into sobs, but the only thing on her face was anger. White-hot, boiling _anger_.

With Josh on the floor, her attention seemed riveted on Sam, no trace of white left in her eyes. “_Where were you?_” she seethed in Hannah’s voice, the shape of her teeth and tongue keeping the imitation from being pitch-perfect. “_Why didn’t you help me?!_”

In retrospect, no, it was not the brightest decision she could’ve made. However, in that split-second, it was what she had. The moment she’d seen Ash…Hannah…Ashannah? Hannash? Fuck it—when she saw that she was climbing over the sculpture, two things became immediately apparent to her: 1. They needed to put as much space between themselves and…_her_ as possible, and 2. She was going to have to buy them a little time to do that.

In reality, her winding up and chucking her phone _directly_ at Ash’s head was probably more instinct than planning, but oh, Sam knew she’d have to come up with some kind of excuse to keep from feeling guilty for the rest of her life, and the sooner she started convincing herself it was all part of some well calculated escape plan, the better.

“_Ow!_” The sound was way more Ashley than Hannah (only adding to that crockpot of guilt already beginning to bubble away in Sam’s gut). Her hands flew up to her face, and that’s when Sam sprung into action, grabbing both the guys by their arms and rushing around the sectional, frantically searching for a place they could duck into.

“Dining room, dining room!” Josh managed to get out, basically kicking said door down so the three of them could collapse inside. He slammed the door shut behind them just as quickly, his hands scrabbling around he knob until he realized, “_Fuck me!_ This one doesn’t _lock!_”

“Who cares?!” Sam jammed her back against the door, digging her heels into the floor as best she could. “There’s three of us and she weighs twenty pounds!”

“She just _picked me up _and threw me _across a fucking room_ like I was a shih tzu, Sam!”

Chris, at least, didn’t seem to need any further convincing. He joined Sam, pressing his back flat against the door, really putting his weight into it. “What the fuck?!” he kept saying. Sam figured he probably wasn’t expecting an actual _answer_, but she still felt bad she couldn’t give him one. “What the f—”

_BANG!_

The door rattled on its hinges as something (Ashley, they knew) rammed it from the other side, threatening to send the three of them cartwheeling off against the far wall.

“Okay, uh…” Her mouth was running. She couldn’t stop it. “So quick, what do we know?”

“What?!”

“What are you talking about?!”  
  
“What do we _know?!_” she repeated, wincing as the door gave another lurch behind them, that time accompanied by a furious, otherworldly scream. “What do we know about getting rid of ghosts?!”

Whipping his head in her direction, Chris glared. “We don’t know _anything_ about getting rid of ghosts! They’re not—”

_BANG!_  
  
Josh let out a series of laughs made terse by incredulity, “_This_ is the time where you wanna wax poetic about whether or not ghosts are real?!” He grunted with effort, pushing himself as fully against the door as he could. “And I don’t know, Sam! _Ash_ is the one who always did the research, and uh—”

_BANG!_

“—I always just sort of…improvised!”

“Are you regretting that decision at all?”

“You know, as a matter of fact—”

The door gave one last heave before the air was rent by a second shriek, high and loud and tapering into a whistle that shook the glass of the windows in their panes. Then, like machine gun fire, the door vibrated under their weight, shaking with an impossible series of furious knocks, seeming to come from every inch of the door at once.

Sam screwed her face up tightly, desperately trying to wring every drop of stupid, pointless ghost hunting knowledge from her brain. The guys might not have read any of the research, but _she_ sure had, so…she could figure this out, right?

Right??

“I-I-I don’t even get why this is happening,” Chris stammered, grimacing as the screaming from the other side of the door grew angrier. “What the _fuck_ did you guys do to piss her off so bad?!” He paused, looking to Sam again, “And since when do you fucking know Hannah and Beth?!”

“Long story. I—oh my God! Crazy old Jack Fiddler! He told us! He _told_ us! He said there was a curse up here! That…sometimes the spirits that die on the mountain turn angry! That has to be—”

“_Beth’s_ not mad,” Chris pointed out.

Josh gave up on trying to hold himself back, it seemed, half-shouting, half-barking a sharp “_UGH!_” as the door began to splinter. “CRAZY OLD JACK FIDDLER WAS CRAZY! ‘CRAZY’ WAS _LITERALLY A KEY PART OF HIS NAME_, I THINK MAYBE WE CAN FOREGO THE LOGIC HERE, COCHISE!”

“Jesus! You don’t have to yell, I’m just trying to—”

“Why do ghosts stay around…” Sam muttered to herself, blocking out the sounds of the guys arguing, Ashley screaming, the door promising to give way if they didn’t do something fast. “Why do ghosts stay…uh, uh…died in a passion? Not really…uh, unfinished business, yeah, yeah, that’s what Beth said…her unfinished business was…that Hannah was angry? Was that…?” She clenched every muscle in her body as tightly as she could, hoping against hope that something about the strain might knock something loose.

Why would Hannah be angry? Her death was tragic, sure, but so was Beth’s. She’d suffered, true, and Sam hadn’t been able to help…neither had Josh, really, but it wasn’t like they could help her _now_. Why else did Ash say spirits haunted places? Wasn’t there something else? There was—the more she thought on it, the more certain she became. There was! There _was!_ There was…

“I got it!” Sam lolled her head back, uncomfortably aware of the way the wood had started _bulging_ in the frame, flakes of its paneling starting to fall away. “We didn’t say goodbye! We never said goodbye!”

“_What?!_”

“Neither of us went to the funeral! We, we _couldn’t!_ We just kept trying to push it away and repress all of it, and we never said goodbye! She never got any closure!” Sam pulled in a breath, feeling something in her stomach waver with the promise of tears. “_Hannah, I’m sorry!” _She called aloud, feeling her own voice pulse in her ears. _“I’m sorry Hannah, I miss you so much, I love you, but you can rest now, it’s all okay!_”

The banging did not stop.

“Josh!”

“You can’t be serious.”  
  
“_JOSH!_”

“Okay, fine!” From Chris’s other side, she heard him suck in a breath of his own, _“I’m sorry too, Han! I should’ve been here to drive you, I’m sorry I wasn’t, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you guys! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, please just…we’re good! You can go now!_”

The door went still beneath them.

None of them moved at fist. Oh no, they continued to stand there, chests rising and falling with panicked breaths, faces red with strain, and they simply…looked at each other. Sam felt her throat work as she tried to swallow. She watched Chris and Josh exchange disoriented looks, and one after another, they felt themselves begin to laugh. Tiny laughs, each so full of relief that they seemed to lift a ton of weight from their shoulders.

And then the door lurched hard enough to send Josh sprawling to the floor.

“Yeah, I don’t think she accepted your apology.”

“Chris! Now is _not the time!_” It would’ve been a lie to say she wasn’t disappointed—she _was_—but Sam tamped all of that deep, deep inside of herself for the time being. Okay, so _that_ hadn’t worked…maybe saying goodbye was less an emotional thing and more of a literal, _physical_ thing. The moment that idea occurred to her, everything clicked into place. She lifted her head, eyes wide with understanding. “I know what we have to do.”

“Oh, cool,” Josh said from the floor, shakily getting up and taking his earlier place. “Do fucking tell.”

But God, she couldn’t say! She couldn’t, not with Ash-Hannah right on the other side of the door! She could probably hear everything they were saying, so if she went and spilled the beans, then none of it would work. No. No, she’d just…she’d have to do it and pray to whatever deity chose to listen that the guys wouldn’t get themselves killed in the process. “Okay, so here’s the thing. We’re gonna have to let go of the door.”

“What?!”

“No fucking way!”  
  
“Listen!” She tried to pitch her voice into something lower, “Hannah’s only interested in me and Josh…I think. So Chris, you should be fine…probably.”

“Comforting!”

Sam soldiered on, “I only need a few seconds, okay? That’s it! A few seconds, and everything’ll be fine! Just…when she busts in…just…keep her from killing Josh, okay?”

Chris sputtered, “W-why me?! You’re more athletic! _You_ sh—”

“She’s _your_ girlfriend, Chris, she won’t attack _you!_”

His entire posture changed at that, going tense and nervous and not _nearly_ as concerned with barricading the door as he had been a second ago. “I-I mean…she’s…she’s not _really_ my _girlfri_—” From behind them, there was a muted _THUMP_, a scream, and then an upsettingly large chunk of the door toppled onto the floor between them, just wide enough to allow a pale hand wearing a fingerless glove to jam through.

Sam arched her eyebrows.

“…yeah, okay,” Chris said, sounding almost robotic, “You raise a good point. I’ll, uh…see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Cochise. You’re a real pal,” Josh said, ducking out of the way of Ash’s grabby fingers. “Sammy, I hope to Christ you know what you’re talking about, because I don’t know how much I’m trusting the power of love to keep my organs where they’re supposed to be…”

“I know…I know…” She steadied herself with a deep breath, and then nodded at them. “One…two…_now!_”

Things got weird from that point on.

Well, uh, okay, weird_er_. They got weird_er_ from that point on.

They jumped away from the door right as Ashley managed to knock it from its hinges, the whole kit and caboodle falling into the dining room. She might’ve stumbled her way into the room, she might’ve slithered in with that same bizarre grace, hell, she might’ve _flown_, for all Sam knew, because _her_ legs were suddenly made out of springs—she waited until she saw Ash’s attention caught by the guys, and then she sprang into action, hurling herself into the great room.

Her boots slipped on the floor, sending her sprawling for an instant, but that was fine, it was all _fine_. Sam scrambled her way over to the spirit board, and…

“Shit!”

Where was the planchette?! Where had it gone? It had flown off the board and smacked Ash in the face when she…_aha!_

Sam grabbed the triangular piece of wood from the spot where the wall met the floor, her hands shaking as she tried to figure out which side was its top and which was the bottom.

“_SAM!_” came a frantic shout from the dining room, quickly followed by the sound of something shattering. “_ANY DAY NOW!”_

“Okay, okay, okay,” she said to herself, slamming the planchette onto the board. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her teeth, so she couldn’t tell whether she actually spoke out loud or whether it was all in her head. “Okay…goodbye Beth,” she said to the air. “Goodbye, Hannah.” She pressed her weight down onto the pointer, screwing what was left of her courage to the sticking place, and pushed her arms forward with every ounce of her strength until the viewfinder slid over the very base of the board, magnifying the DB of GOODBYE in a distorted fisheye.

There was a _thump_ from somewhere behind her.

And then silence.

Absolute silence.

In all the stupid expeditions they’d gone on, in all the stupid tapes they’d made, she’d heard it said that ‘the atmosphere just lightened up.’ She’d even _said_ it a few times. Still, she’d never really _bought_ it…not until that precise moment. The overwhelming frigidity of the lodge fizzled out, leaving it cold but acceptable. The ringing in her ears went quiet. Everything felt…light. Breezy.

Without fully intending to, Sam slouched back against the wall, her body turning into a ragdoll of relief. She breathed slowly, deliberately, waiting until her heart slowed to attempt speech again. “Guys?”

After a beat, she could hear unsteady footsteps joining her. One after another, the other three dropped to the floor next to her, Josh sporting a blooming shiner as he laid himself on the hardwood, Chris holding a wadded up cloth napkin to Ash’s bleeding lip as he eased himself to sit against the console table, Ashley’s shoulders shaking with silent sobs of what could’ve been hysteria but could’ve just as easily been relief.

The four of them stayed like that for a long, long time, no one saying anything, the only movement being the rise and fall of their chests as they caught their breath.

“Hey, so…” Sam reached up to rub at her neck, feeling the tic of her pulse approaching something like normalcy. “…uh, I think I might be done with the whole…paranormal…thing.”

“Meee too.”

“Me three.”

“Yeah, me…me four.”

She nodded slightly, using her boot to scoot the spirit board that much farther away from her. “Cool. Cool.”

Another minute or two passed in exactly the same way, everyone just sitting (or lying) and staring, no one wanting to be the first to ask the obvious question: So, um, what the fuck, right?

Just when that tension seemed it would become too much, Ashley shakily got to her feet, using the table to steady herself. “I’m…I’m gonna go make us some hot chocolate,” she said.

Chris was up a second later, dropping the ruined napkin onto the table next to the Washingtons’ framed photographs. “I’ll help.”

“Extra marshmallows in mine,” Josh commented airily, having long-since flung one of his arms over his face.

Once they left, Sam felt better about taking up space. She carefully flopped herself flat on the floor like Josh had, folding her hands over her stomach as she breathed. She shut her eyes, focusing in on what was either the faraway sound of the grandfather clock ticking away upstairs or her own imagination. If she had to guess, she probably dozed for a few minutes there, the adrenaline dump proving too much for her system. Behind her eyes danced the events of the day, each somehow stranger and more impossible than the last, turning and tumbling around one another until it became little more than a swirl of color.

When she opened her eyes, the light filtering through the blinds had changed a bit, but not nearly enough to suggest she’d been out for too long. Long enough for her headache to start setting in, sure, but that was a separate issue.

“No cocoa?” she mumbled, turning her head to look Josh’s way.

“Nope. Think the pantry’s haunted?”

She managed to scoff at that, the sound surprising her. “Don’t even _joke_, oh my God…” Sam slowly began to push herself up from the floor, each of her tendons creaking like the wood below her as she did so. After an embarrassing amount of time, she got to her feet, gingerly limping her way out of the great room and towards the kitchen to check on Chris and Ashley.

Even in her head she couldn’t find it in herself to use the ‘p-word’ to describe what had happened to Ash, but man…that was probably the sort of thing you didn’t just bounce back from. Ugh, there she’d been, napping on the floor, and in all likelihood Ash was rocking back and forth in the kitchen sobbing while Chris tried to comfort her and—

Well.

When she poked her head into the kitchen, she saw she was at least _half_ right. There was definitely _some_ kind of comforting going on. What she’d imagined in her head had been more along the lines of like, back-patting, or shoulder-crying, or maybe even gentle, rocking hugs.

She was not, as it turned out, expecting them to be making out like that, Ash’s hands in his hair, Chris’s glasses knocked comically askew from the sheer…_energy_ of it all.

Without a word, she turned right back around and limped to her earlier spot on the great room’s floor, lying down next to Josh.

“No cocoa?” he asked, parroting her earlier question.

“Nope.”

“Pantry’s haunted, isn’t it?”

She sighed deeply through her nose, rolling onto her side to tuck herself against his shoulder. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“Ominous, Sammy.” The arm that wasn’t draped over his face moved to wrap around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “I’ll take your word for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends!!! I hope you're all hanging in there and staying safe and healthy <3
> 
> A quick note about this fic and the FUTURE OF THE GHOST HUNTING AU...
> 
> As it turns out, I am SUUUPER not ready to part with the CREEPs. So. While the final chapter in THIS story is going to be more of an epilogue than a full-ass chapter, good news!!! There is a sequel-flavored spinoff story heading your way (hopefully) soon!
> 
> If you're interested in reading more in this universe, please consider subscribing to the series it's a part of! I'm hoping that, in addition to the multi-chap I'm planning, I'll be putting up little drabbles about the CREEPs here and there as time goes on, because Lord help me, I love this au ;P
> 
> (PS If you ALSO enjoy this au, and there are things you'd really, really like to see, please don't be shy, and feel free to drop me a note on tumblr or here on AO3!!! I can't make promises currently for what I will/won't be writing for it in the future, but rest assured, if you're having fun with this AU, please know I am too, and I'm not ready to, well...say GOODBYE yet.)
> 
> See you guys in the final chapter!!! :D


	17. Epilogue – Call anyone else. For the love of God, call ANYONE else!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and the rest of the CREEPs sign off...for now.

“It’s going, right?”

“Do you see the waveforms on the screen?”

“Wavefo—”

“The…the spikey lines, Ash. The ones right in front of your face.”

“Oh! Those! Yeah, I—”

“That means it’s _going_. Jesus Christ. This isn’t rocket science.”

“Well excuse me! I’m still just not used to—”

“You know guys, as much as I love the playful banter thing, the longer we sit here gabbing, the more Chris has to edit out later, sooo…”

“Hey! Yeah! Finally, _someone_ appreciates my time and—”

“Okay, _SHUT UP!_” Surprising a grand total of no one, Josh smacked a hand against the table, the sudden noise succeeding in getting them to go quiet…as well as creating a _massive_ spike in the recording. (Sam could see Chris grimace just looking at it.) Leaning in a bit closer to the mic, Josh shot them all a warning glare before going into the familiar opening spiel. “Well hello friends and fans! It’s that time again—time to…”

“Grab your bay-_ghouls_ and _scream_-cheese,” Chris interrupted, grinning like a fool at the chorus of groans he got from the rest of them. “Who the hell needs brunch when you’ve got us here to serve up your breakfast-time dose of spooky shit?”

“We’re cutting all of that out, y’know,” Ashley said, trying to sigh but mostly just giggling.

He held up a finger to shush her, raising his eyebrows as he spoke into his mic. “This is the Creepy Crepes Podcast, and no, we’re not cutting _any_ of that out.”

Sam shook her head. “And so the true horror begins.”

“Yeah, the horror of Chris thinking he’s funny.”

“Now _that_,” he interrupted again, “_That_ is _definitely_ getting cut out.”

Josh clucked his tongue like a beleaguered babysitter dealing with toddlers. “Well, while the peanut gallery flaps their yaps, I’d like to take a sec to say we’re all honored and humbled to present you with our fifth—yeah, you heard that right, _fifth_—episode. Sammy, tell ‘em how honored and humbled we are.”

“Super honored,” she said, pulling her microphone just a bit closer as she settled more comfortably into her chair. “Super humbled.”

“A woman of many words…” Chris snickered. “But for real, I’m proud of us! Really! You ever think we’d make it a whole five eps?”

“No,” Sam and Ashley said at once, meeting each other’s eyes over the table and laughing.

“Wow. Nice.”

“I was _totally_ sure you guys would get bored after like…_two_, and we’d have to suffer through another cooking blog debacle.”

“It wasn’t a _debacle_, Ash.”

“You started multiple grease fires, _Chris_.”

“Yeah well…clearly you and I have different definitions of ‘debacle.’”

“_Clearly_.”

That time, it was Sam who took it upon herself to get them back on track. Well…relatively speaking, at least. “Okay, okay, your obvious culinary shortcomings aside—”

“I _have_ no shortcomings,” Josh deadpanned.

“Madam, you’ve gone too far this time!”

“All of that aside!” she repeated, raising her voice so she could be heard over them, her words full of laughter. “I seem to remember you guys saying you had a, uh, super special story you wanted to cover for this…let’s say ‘momentous’ occasion.”

Across the way, she saw Chris frown, turning to glance between Josh and Ash. “Story?” he asked, “No one mentioned any story to _me_…”

“Why would we?” Ashley joked, squinching up her nose before playfully sticking her tongue out in his direction. “Josh made us _promise_ we wouldn’t say—”

“Oh God, here it comes…”

“—because _you’re_ gonna be the one doing most of the narration.”

“Wh—I don’ even get to do a character voice?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fuck you, man! My voices are—”

“Awful, Cochise. They’re…” Josh shook his head, “They’re just awful.”

“Better than _yours_,” he grumbled under his breath.

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. For the sake of our continued friendship.”

Yeah. They were about as on-track as they would _ever_ be. Sam pulled her legs up onto her seat, neatly tucking them under herself so she could sit criss-cross. “See, when I hear that this is a strictly Washington-Brown endeavor, that’s when I get nervous.”

“As you should.”

“That’s fair!”

She couldn’t help grinning at their stupid, smiling faces. There’d been a moment there after they’d gotten back from the lodge where a part of her had feared her time with the CREEPs was nearing its end.

Not because of anything _she’d_ done, of course, but uh…well…Ash had come away from Blackwood needing two stitches on her face, splints for three fingers, and a considerable stretch of doctor-ordered bed rest. Josh had come away with a black eye, a couple bruised ribs, and a hairline fracture in his coccyx (a diagnosis Chris had belly-laughed over for like four days straight). As it turned out, getting possessed…and being thrown around by someone who was possessed…wasn’t exactly the safest of pastimes.

Or covered by most insurance plans.

She’d seen it so clearly in her head: She’d gone through all those emotions, all those bizarre ups and downs and trials and tribulations for nothing. She’d stepped _wildly_ out of her comfort zone (with a hell of a nudge from Beth and/or Hannah, to be fair), she’d found a group of people who she liked and who liked her, she’d gotten attached to them, and just like that…Blackwood Pines was going to take them away just like it had done before. Josh and Ash would never speak to each other again, she _knew_ it! How could they? After everything that had happened that night, after their injuries? There was no way. There was just _no way_. The group was going to crash and burn and she’d be alone again.

Only…as it turned out, that’s not what happened. Like. At all. If anything, the night’s festivities had seemed to _solidify_ Josh and Ashley’s friendship, and honestly? Sam wasn’t about to ask.

God, horror nerds were _so fucking weird_.

So they’d walked away from the mountain in one piece (more or less) and the biggest challenge they’d been forced to contend with had been convincing Josh’s parents that ‘No, really, the lodge was like that when we got there.’

Well, okay, that and Chris’s disappointment over their shared bet.

Apparently they’d never come up with a contingency plan for what would happen if the whole group discovered undeniable proof of the supernatural at the same time, so after a grueling debate—a debate Sam had been made moderator of, much to her chagrin—it was decided everything cancelled out. The three of them had to pay their own student loans, same as before.

Chris had pouted _for days_.

“So spill it, what’s the story?”

Josh cleared his throat in an attempt to sound haughty. “I’m so glad you’ve asked, Samantha. Today, for your listening pleasure, we have one of my _personal_ all-time fave creepypastas.”

“…uh…” Sam glanced around the table and saw absolutely no help being offered to her. “I-I’m sorry, did you just say creepy_pas_—”

“Ooh! Ooh! Is it Jeff the Killer?!”

“No Cochise, you fucking degenerate, it’s not Jeff the Killer.”

A small gasp full of childlike glee. “_Slenderman?!_”

Ashley reached over to the setup on the table, clicking a switch in one deft movement. “All right. Chris’s mic has been _officially_ muted, so—_hey!_” She tried to push him away from her own mic to no avail.

“Hang on! Will someone explain to me what a friggin’ _creepypasta_ is?!” She knew the instant it was out of her mouth that she’d committed some sort of sin, the other three collapsing into the same groans Chris’s jokes usually got.

Josh clutched a hand over his heart, face screwed up in agony. “Sammy, _please!_”

“You’re killing him! Quick Sam, take it back, take it baaack!”

Finally managing to shove Chris away from her microphone (using both hands, no less), Ashley rolled her eyes. “Basically they’re short horror stories that get circulated around the internet. Sort of like…well, if you want to get into the _history_ of them—”

“We don’t,” Josh said, mouth a little _too_ close to his mic.

“—you can look at like, those old chain emails that would go around sometimes, and—”

“No one wants the history, Ash.”

“—they sort of evolved out of that tradition of—”

_Click!_

“Aaand you can all thank me later, but now we have both Chris _and_ Ash muted!” Josh took a moment to pretend to bow to their audience before turning to Sam. “Internet horror stories. Done.” He glanced to Chris and Ash as they turned their mics back on. “_Done!_ Wasn’t that easy? See how simple shit can be?”

“Internet horror stories, huh?” Sam raised her eyebrows and caught Ashley’s attention. “You’re a writer, Ash—you ever written a…” She didn’t get to finish.

Ashley snorted so hard that _Sam’s_ sinuses hurt. “Oh. Oh God no,” she laughed. “I have _standards_, thanks.”

“Uh…”

“_Josh_ is more the creepypasta guy. I’d _never_ write a creepypasta. But I’ve definitely tried my hand at a nosleep or two…”

“Oh come on.”

Sam slumped her shoulders. “For the love of…okay, obviously I’m missing something. Or like…a lot of things, much more likely, so…what’s a nosleep, exactly?”

Josh groaned, “It’s the same. Fucking. Thing!”

“No it’s _not!_” Ashley argued, leaning forward in her seat. “The _quality_ varies _so much_ between them—”

“Every single fucking nosleep is the same, so don’t you come at me with that bullshit about _quality_—”

“Creepypastas are all like ‘One day I turned on an old copy of Cooking Mama I found at a garage sale and all her recipes used human body parts as ingredients! And also her eyes were hyper-realistic and bleeding!’”

“Yeah, and every nosleep starts out ‘Sorry guys, I’m not a writer, but I’ll try my best,’ and then they make me read six thousand words of mostly adverbs and the word ‘crimson’ with my own two goddamn hyper-realistic, bleeding eyes, so I rest my fucking _case_.”

As they went back and forth through what sounded like a very, very old argument, Sam watched Chris gesture to both of them, twirling his finger near his ear. That was great for a podcast. Really helpful for the audience.

“What about you?” Sam asked him. “You got a horse in this particular race?”

“What, me?” Chris shook his head, “Oh no. Oh nononono. Just between us?” He acted as though he was going to tell her secret despite them all being recorded. Holding a hand up to his mouth, he stage-whispered, “I’m more of a, uh…SCP guy, myself.”

That, apparently, was the magic word needed to unite Josh and Ashley. “Shut _up!_”

For being a quote-unquote short horror story, it took them a fair amount of time to read through. More than anything else, Sam thought it was a miracle they’d gotten that far at all, what with Chris’s meandering narration and Ash doing everything in her power to make Josh break whatever godawful voice he’d decided to slip into each time a new character was introduced. Had she been _enjoying_ the story? Eh, not really, but she _had_ been enjoying listening to them be idiots, so when it happened, she was laughing. At first.

They were almost done when it happened, too. That was the thing—they were _so close_ to being done when her phone started to ring.

Chris was the first to look up, scoffing in the terrible approximation of Edgar’s accent he’d _insisted_ on using while reading. One would think that, given how often he used it, that stuffy, posh affectation might’ve improved. It had not. Honestly, it might’ve gotten _worse. _“Whose bloody phone is that? Hu-hu-hubuh, I say, this is rather—”

But Sam only vaguely heard him. She turned her head to the side table where, lo and behold, the screen of her phone had lit up. It rang and rang, the playful marimba of her ringtone abhorrently shrill.

“—you uh…okay there Sam? We can cut this out, I was just joking about being—”

She pulled her headphones off and set them on the table, getting up to grab her phone. “I…ha. I could’ve sworn I put this on vibrate…” The instant she saw the caller ID, she felt the color run out of her face.

“…Sam?”

Without saying a word, she laid her phone flat on the table where they could see it. It kept ringing.

And ringing.

And _ringing_.

And the name on the ID read ‘Unknown.’

“O-oh,” Josh stammered, an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “Well that’s…mmm.”

Subtly as he could, Chris scooted a few inches away from Ashley…who promptly smacked his arm for not being subtle _enough_. They stared and stared, and the phone just. Kept. Ringing.

“You could just—”

“What, _ignore it?_ Yeah, how’d that work out last time, genius?”

Before she could think herself out of it (before the others could _talk_ her out of it), Sam hit the accept and speakerphone buttons in rapid succession.

The four of them acted as one, recoiling from the phone as though it were a poisonous insect, listening to the dead air buzz on the other end.

Sam swallowed hard, her fingers white-knuckled as she gripped onto the edge of the table with one hand and Josh’s wrist with the other. “…hello?” she said, speaking in a low, apprehensive whisper.

Silence.

Then, “Hello. This is an automated call reminding you that the warranty on your—”

“Oh my God.”

Like ragdolls, they sagged with obvious relief, collapsing into the manic laughter of the terrified. Headphones came off, the recording was paused, and for a long moment they just _exhaled_.

After their, um…_odd_ night in the Pines, they’d bailed at first light. No sanatorium, no return trip to apologize to crazy old Jack Fiddler for doubting him, no nothing. They’d run as fast and as far as they could, and even once they’d returned safe and sound at CREEP HQ, they hadn’t done more talking about the situation than had been entirely necessary.

Obviously they weren’t as over it as they were pretending they were.

Oho, they were…going to have to talk about that eventually. Later. When not taping a shitty horror podcast, maybe.

“Okay, I don’t know about you guys, but uh, I think I’m ready for a break.” Sam flashed a tense smile at them before standing, tossing her phone back onto the side table after hanging up on the robotic voice. “Like, a _serious_ break.”

“Hear hear,” Josh agreed. He slouched deeper into the couch cushions, raking his fingers through his hair. “Jesus Christ,” she heard him say as she headed for the kitchen, “Almost popped a gasket, there…”

Sam sighed and felt the last of her adrenaline fizzle out with the breath. She swung into the kitchen and found herself smiling. There, on the dented door of the fridge, someone had rearranged the bright alphabet magnets to read ‘HI SAM,’ the rest of the letters surrounding the message in a lumpy-bumping shape she thought was _probably_ supposed to be the CREEPs’ ghost logo. Or an amoeba. One or the other. “Cute,” she muttered, letting herself hope it was a sign the guys had finally—_finally!_—had the decency to start stocking snacks _she_ could eat.

“Anyone want a drink?” she called over her shoulder towards the other room. “You’ve got, like, every kind of soda under the sun, uh…Red Bull, Monster, some…oh, _red_ Gatorade, um, water, duh…” She waited to see whether anyone would answer, and when no one did, she continued under her breath, “Barbecue sauce, mayo, pickles, a little ketchup…”

From the next room, she heard not an answer, but some sort of commotion (the kind that involved voices being raised), so she grabbed the first soda she saw and shut the fridge again.

“So is that a no on the barbecue sauce?” she asked, walking into the main room and leaning against the wall as she took a drink.

Again, no answer to her question, but Ash whipped around in her seat the moment Sam reappeared. “Can you talk some sense into him, please?!”

Her eyes followed where Ash was pointing. Josh grinned his usual wide, toothy grin. “_Him?_” Sam asked, raising her eyebrows. “I mean, I could _try_, but…”

“We agreed the next segment would be called ‘The Garbage Tapes.’” Per the usual, Ashley kept talking. “The part where we rag on crappy horror movies.”

Sam took a sip of her soda and waited for what she was sure would turn out to be an especially stupid ‘but.’

“We didn’t agree on ‘The Garbage Tapes,’” Josh drawled, “I told you from the fucking get-go that I wanted it to be ‘The _Carnage_ Tapes.’”

She grimaced. “Oh, eugh. I’m with Ash on this.”

“_Thank you!_”

Josh looked up at her as though she’d stabbed him directly between the ribs. “Oh come the fuck on…carnage makes more sense than garbage!”

“How?! The whole point is we’re _trash-talking _them!”

“No, the whole point is we’re _tearing them apart!_”

Oh, there was no describing the dread that filled her when she saw Chris raise his hand like a good little schoolboy. “I would like to propose a compromise.” He waited until they turned to him. “How about the best of both worlds? We call it…‘The Garnage Tapes!’” He spread his arms out wide, wiggling his fingers the whole time.

There was a beat, two, three, where she saw Ash and Josh exchange inscrutable glances. Then Josh shrugged.

“I don’t _hate_ it…” Ashley admitted.

Chris did a celebratory shoulder-dance, complete with more unnecessary finger wiggling.

“What’s the first flick we’re putting on the chopping block?” Sam asked, stretching her calves out as she leaned on the wall. “Anything I’ve seen?”

“Guess that depends, Sammy…you seen _Blood Monastery?_”

_Blood Mona_…wait. “You’re gonna insult your dad’s movies?! Like, on a podcast _anyone_ could listen to?”

“Um…duh? They’re awful.”

Sam looked towards Ashley, but she only shrugged. “I mean…they are,” she nodded, “They’re like, really, _really_ bad.”

She shook her head, laughing harder than she should’ve. “You guys are heartless.”

“That’s us! No hearts, no souls, super cute butts, though…”

“Uh huh.” Sam tapped a fingernail on the can’s pop tab, marking out the rhythm to a crappy song the radio had been playing lately. “Cute butts miiight be a stretch…but whoever’s butt left that message on the fridge is at least, I dunno, cute-adjacent.”

“Um, was that supposed to be an actual sentence?”

“Wait. What message?” Josh immediately glared Ash’s way. “You messing with the fridge magnets, Hemingway?”

“Please.”

Rolling her eyes, she set her can down for the sole purpose of being able to judgmentally fold her arms across her chest. “Har-de-har. I thought we agreed we were done with the paranormal pranks and stuff, guys.”

“Sam, I don’t know what to tell you. The fridge has said ‘DO THE BARTMAN’ for the whole two fuckin’ years we’ve lived here—oh, except that time last April where Cochise replaced the B with an F—”

Chris leaned closer to Ash, pretending to whisper, “Some of my finest work, if I do say so myself…”

“—so unless the super cute message you’re talking about is telling us to do the hottest dance craze of the early 90’s, then I’ve got _no Earthly idea_ what you mean.”

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

She definitely believed him.

Sam heaved a dramatic sigh before turning on her heel, waving him to join her. “You’re gonna tell me,” she began, giving him a jokingly stern glare as he met her in the kitchen’s doorway, “That none of you wrote ‘HI SAM’ there on the…” She’d held her arm out towards the fridge to gesture at its door, but…

But…

There was no message written on the fridge. There was no ‘HI SAM,’ there was no ‘DO THE BARTMAN,’ there wasn’t even Chris’s oh-so-genius remix of ‘DO THE FARTMAN,’ no. There was nothing written there. Because there were no alphabet magnets on the fridge.

She and Josh turned to look at one another just as the power to the whole apartment flickered, buzzed, shut off completely, hurtling them into perfect darkness. From the next room over, they heard Chris and Ash shout in surprise, followed by a dull _thump_ of someone falling onto the floor.

“Oh come _on_…”

“Lotta shit plugged in tonight,” Josh said, though he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. “Probably just blew a fuse or some shit. It’s fine, it’ll—”

The lights flickered on. And there, on the fridge, were the magnets, now arranged in the shape of a simple smiley face.

For a beat, they didn’t say anything. Not a single word. The two of them just stared at the cartoonish grin cobbled together by so many rainbow-colored letters, trying to absorb precisely what it was that they were seeing.

Josh didn’t turn to her, but he did lift his hand, aiming a tired finger-gun in her direction. “I won’t tell Tweedledee and Tweedledum out there if you don’t.”

Sam slowly turned to look at him, her eyebrows high with disbelief.

This was what she got for meeting people on the internet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A super special shoutout here to fudgeroach for The Garnage Tapes, because JESUS HELP ME, nothing brings me more joy in this world than The Garnage Tapes. ;P)
> 
> Guys!!! I can't tell you how weird it is to see 'Finished Work' on this baby, ahhh!!!
> 
> Thank you so, so much for sticking with me through this story - I know I've said it before, but honestly, I started this fic as a jokey little project I could use as a sort of palette cleanser while working on my bigger, heavier fics, and I never in a million years expected the response you'd all have to it, so...ahhh! Thank you!!! I'm so glad you had fun with this spooky little...thing...and that you're diggin' the CREEPs as much as I am!
> 
> I mentioned this in the last chapter, but if you're enjoying this ghost hunting au, please consider subscribing to the series it's a part of! There's already at least one follow-up, spin-offy, multichap fic being worked on as we speak, and I'm sure as time goes on, I'll be writing additional oneshots and stuff for these nerds. I'm at a particularly, uh, intense point in one of my other fics right now, so I can't say for certain WHEN I'll be able to start putting chapters for the next one up, but...please know it is, in fact, in the works, and it WILL exist at some point in the near future ;)
> 
> ANYWAY! Thank you a million times over for coming along for this ride, I hope you all had a blast! :) Until next time (wherein the CREEPs may or may not follow-through in their part of their deal with Conrad...), stay safe and healthy out there!
> 
> And like, try not to piss off any ghosts.


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